The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848, 1839-01-26
A N TI-SL A RY. .
From The Friend of Man.

r
Stewart Esqr., of Utica, N. Y, before joint
) committee of the Senate and House of the
Legislature of Vermont, raised to inquire into the
Ipropriety of reporting and passing resolutions ad
dressed to Congress, praying that body to abolish
the internal slavetrade between the states, slavery
in the District of Columbia and in the territories
of the United States, and to prevent the admis
sion of new slave states and Texas into the Tn.
ion, by special request and invitation from the
Vermont State A. S. Society, on the 25th, 26th
and 9th of October, 1888. Mr. Stewart address
ed the Committee as follows.
Honorable gentlemen of the Joint Committee
You are clothed with power for the most exal-
ted purposes not to enquire into the propriety OF
bridge over river, the suitableness Of granting
bank charter, in this or that town, of increasing
or diminishing the tax on this or that district of
country mo, your duty extends to eight times
as many people as those who constitute this SOW
reign and Independent state, who are your coun-
trymen, your brethren your fellow beings, born in
the republic, not to its rich inheritance, but its or
phanage not to its glory but its dlshonor; not to
its rich treasures of knowledge and religion, but
its utter intellectual bereavement and heahenism;
not to its liberty and Independence but its slavery
and loss of all things; not to it's bright and glor-
GUS hopes but it's blackness of darkness in despair
| In behalf of two and half millions of your
wretched fellow men, found in your own glorious
but disgraced country, the cry for pity, hope and
mercy is waited in every southern wind which
blows over the lands of chains and tears, and has
brought to Vermont the deep lamentations of the
unptied, the unwept and the unmourned.
TO what friend should the slave sooner go than
to the freeman .of these wales and mountains {?
The dark unbroken wilderness, which half
century since covered this beautiful land, was not
removed by generation of unpaid saves-no,
the white man alone was the pioneer. The stur-
dy BIRCH the majestic elm, the solid beech, the
noble maple, the hated massive hemlock and the
cloud dropping pine,t Anakims of the vegetable
kingdom, have fallen before the freemen of YER
mont, and made the earth to tremble in their dying
groams. We middle and aged men, turn to your
early remembrance, when the vallies and hills at
midnight were illuminated with the funeral piles
of the forest giants: who was high priest who
presided at the sacrifice The sunburnt and hard
knuckeed freeman of Vermont, stood in his SOM
bre linen frock, his sacerdotal robes, and perform
ed the duty No unpaid slave ever heard the
cruel sound of the masters horn call his unrested
limbs from his pile of straw to his misereble toll
in Vermont. No; your mountains would have
held their breath, and refused an echo to that hated
sound. Vermont was the first born child after
the revolution. Although it came into the con-
federacy amidst storms and tempests, which low
hred upon her birth; yet she was born perfect, in
all her limbs, her moral faculties showed that the
Declaration of Independence was her noble de-
sire. She was not like her next sister, Kentucky,
who came misshappen, limpng, half made up with
=. / L.. L.. l;ntl oY,l rc,Yoo
those moral ricketts,, slavery, has sadly dis6gur-
ed that sister, and her unwillingness to be cured
of her complaint, proves that her mind is as badly
affected as her body deformed. Poor Kentucky
is not ashamed to stea but too proud to work, and
too dishonest to pay those who do!
Vermont has penetrated to the central line, be-
tween the equator and the pole, and on the outer
line of the nation, in the far NORTH last year sent
up her resolutions to Congress against slavery /;
those resolutions were truly the moral aurora bo-
reals, the true northern lights, to alarm the proud
terriy the wicked, enlighten the Ignorant, yea, to
intimidate those rickety imps and monsters, who
feed and gorge themselves on human flesh and
blood.
Vermont in presenting those noble resolutions
to an American Congress, in face OF 50 much
leagued malice and cruelty, appeared like an an
gel of mercy walking upon the high places of the
earth. Who might not, on that day, have covet-
ed the honor of birthplace in your state If
seven cities of antiquity contended each, for the
honor of being the birth place of Homer then
may the man Of Vermont be justly proud that his
state was the birth place of those resolutions, and
stood in the front rank of humanity, and first as
state which mounted the parapets of slavery.
| Vermont before her existence as a state, had
tasted of oppression She struggled into exis-
tence under twelve acts of ontlawry passed a
gainst her, by the state of New York.
You had double war for your independence,
yes, treble, with the British Empire and the states
of New York and New Hampshire, each claiming
jurisdiction over you. Your mountains and for
ests were your abiding auxiliaries in these con-
tests these mountains the native abodes of liberty,
the oldest citadels of humanity, the blessed homes
of struggling, prosecuted and unsubdued freedom.
Look at this state in its infancy, sixty years ago,
with but 5000 men, who could handle the axe or
the sword, tearing down the forest, an unacknow-
edged community, contending for an existence
while England, New York and New Hampshire
sought to take it away. Yet Vermont, the real
Switzerland of America, came into existence when
political and personal liberty were priced next af-
ter the salvation of the SOUL as the greatest good
human authority could confer, Slavery, in no