Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1854-05-27
ANTI-SLAVERY BUGLE,
Prom tho A. S. Standard.
7 HE N ND NOW.

TnE Aboltionists though not many Of us are
much stricken in years, have seen many changes in
our time. Those Of us who began at the begin lng
and have perseyered unto this Anniversary Week
constitute sort Of measure of the changes in
Public Opinion for the last five and twenty years
As they mark on the Nilometer in Egypt the diff
ferent points to which the Great River has risen in
different years, so their memories, and the contem-
porary records made Of them, furnish unerrng
monuments of the flowings and the ebbings of that
Thst tide which sweeps nations on TO glory or to
ruin. He who first instituted the Modern Anti
Slavery Mjyement, of which we esteem it the hon
aud the privilege Of lives that VIC have been
permitted to form part, had no distinct idea of
the work that lay before him, Of the instruments
by which it was to be ccomplshed-No more had
they who first cast in their lot with him. lie and
they merely discerned the crying sin of the Nation
and thought, good easy men, that all that was nee
essary was to let the Nation know what it was
about and that repentance and reformation would
follow as the night the day of course, their first
thoughts and their first appeals were made to those
who had in charge the souls of the American Peo-
ple and whose especial business it was to bring
them from sin unto righteousness. Being earnest
ly religious persons themselves, and having taken
up arms against this form that the Enemy Of Souls
had assumed they never dreamed that these works
of his which looked so black and horrible to them
could appear venal to any of the Shepherds If the
Lords Sheep, still less that he could assume to
them in this shape above ALL the garb of an angel
buse them Of these delusions.
The Anniversaries of the American Anti-Slave-
ry Society have boon ithful types Of the condition
Of the general mind. In the earlier days. the Plat
form bore the weight Of large proportion Of cer-
gymen of various denominations within its ample
verge. They were not as general thing, the
most eminent in rank of their denominations
and the denominations were rather of the
humber and democratic than of the wealth
Ter and aristocratic descriptions. The very
ala
traycd into temporary sympathy with the Move
mcnt in its earlier days, discovered and re-
traced the false steps they had made. The honest
gentlemen who held by tho platform for awhile
land we believe that most Of them ceye honest then.
whatever they might have become afterwards) saw
in tho Slave Population n field for Missionary la
Dor, unhappy fellow-men deprived of Gospel pri'
vileges and condemned to heather darkness in n
land of Christian light, and they accepted the
Anti-Slavery Movement as new sort of Domestic
Missions which was to convert masters and slaves
to the particular form of Christianity they rceeiv.
ed. And we mean to include in this category
many aymen OF piety and zeal for religion who
used to swarm upon the platform. But in due
time the Great American Church gave all these
10 understand by the most unequivocal indications,
that such was not the creed of the American
Church. They were told, in significant signs or
by emphatic silence, that any doctrines which went
TO uuchurch the communicates and unfrock lhe
members Of one-half the country, were Gamnable
Lord, and that he would take measures for the re-
dempton of those black confessors at the South
when he could find leisure from the conversion of
the superior class Of sinners who were better worth
saving.
draw their countenance from our platform, and
they went their way and we saw them no more.
The saints par eminence retired, and the sinners
who believed n black soul of as much value as
white one and who were infdels to the Christiani-
aI-. IL L..
account of the way that their Creator had been
pleased to make them, were left in sole possession
of IT, But still il stood, and they stood on it, and
managed to make themselves heard by the nation
and the world. Then there were those who were
closely bound by political sympathes and afinites
to one or tho other of the great parties, who had
taken refuge on our raft after the Anti-Masonic
Party went to pieces, or were misled to think that
Slavery could be attacked and oyerthrown with
out touching either Of the parties which arc its
tools, there were not n few of such who went back
and walked with us no more when they saw Ehith-
or they must needs go with u.s. Those, again, who
were once ornaments of our platform, and whose
names illustrated our Official Lists, disappeared
from our ranks, some to go to Congress, some to
State Senates some to comfortable ohcial stations,
and some to an unwelcome obscurity. But the
platform still stood, and those remained seemed as
stout Of heart as before these apostacies. The
rising waves Of public opinion, stirred by the hazel
Of Anti-Slavery, reached first the Church. and
afterwards the State, ana those VINO CHUNG 10 the
high places of either betook themselves to other
deliverauces- the Nilometer still stood firm
and marked the height to which it had risen when
II swept them away.
There came time yet harder to hide than any
III those, and that was when the Idea first dawned
that Dsty TO the Slave required the Sacrifice of al
ilegiance 10 the Constitution of the country, and
demanded Revolution the only way of escape,
for black slaves white freemen from the despo-
tism which organised into a fundamental ne
-cessity Then, many who were precious to us
could see no longer eye to eye with us, and left
cur company in much sorrow and in no anger.
And so we were left with yet diminished ranks,
but still presenting a front to the enemy, which
was never misunderstood by them, at least. Our
simple principle has been, from the beginning, to
weigh all opinions, characters and institutions in
the balances of the Slaves instinct. We have
tried truly to feel with them, and to see Whatever
affected their condition with their eyes We have
believed this to he the true test of all institutions,
ecclesastical and political, in the country and we
treated them as wo found that they stood 1t. This
s the true secret Of the apparent weakness OF our
instrumentalities, and of the manifest and marvel
ious results they have brought about: We have
used only tho foolishness Of preaching--settng
forth the Anti Slavery Gospel in all its koenness,
telling the nation the things that most OF all per
tAined to its peace, calling things by their right
namss, showing the inevitable tendencies ct the