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| 728 THE UNDERGROUND RAIL ROAD. South either to an amicable or a hostile settlement of the question. Which, he did not ask or care. The duty of the present could not be mis-read; it was written in the vote. With these views, he gave much time and work to organizing in this State, " The National Liberty Party," in 1840, and to securing from Pennsylvania some of the seven thousand votes that were cast for John G. Birney in that year throughout the Union. By the time another election came, the party bad swelled its numbers to seventy thousand. To contribute his share towards this success, tract after tract, address after address, were written and sent broadcast; meetings were convened, committees formed, resolutions framed, speeches made, petitions and remonstrances 6ent, public action fearlessly sifted and criticised ; in short, because he held a steady i'aith in men's humane promptings when ultimately reached, he ' cried aloud' to them by every access, and 'spared not' to call them from their timidity and time-serving to manly utterance through the ballot-box. Of such appeals, his address of the " Liberty Party of Pennsylvania, to the people of the State," issued in 1844, may stand as a sample. It is a vivid portrayal of the slavp power's insidious encroachments, and of its monopolized guidance of the Government. It gathers up the natioual statistics into groups, shows how new meaning is reflected from them thus related, that all unite to illustrate the single fact of the Soutli's steady increase of power, her tightening grasp about the throat of government, and her buffets of threat to the North when a weedling palm failed to palsy fast enough. It vrarns northern voters of the undertow that is drawing them, and adjures them, by every consideration of political common sense, not to cast their ballots for cither of the pro-slavery candidates presented. The conclusion of this address is as follows: CUE OBJECT. "And now, fellow-citizens, you may ask, what is onr object in thus exhibiting to yon the alarming influence of the slave power? Do we wish to excite in your bosoms feelings of hatred against citizens of a common country? Do we wish to array the Free stales against the Slave states in hostile strife? No, fellow-citizens. But wo wiah to show you that, while the slave states are inferior to us in free population, having not even oue half of ours ; inferior in morals, being the region of bowie knives and duels, of assassinations and lynch law; inferior in mental attainments, having not one-fourth of the number that can read and write; inferior in intelligence, having not one-fifth of the number of literary and scientific periodicals; inferior in the products of agriculture and manufactures, of mines, of fisheries, and of the forest; inferior, in short, in everything that constitutes the wealth, the honor, the dignity, the stability, the happiness, the true greatness of a nation,—it is wrong, it is unjust, it is absurd, that they should have an influence in all the departments of government so entirely disproportionate to -our own. We would arouse you to yonr own true interests. We would have you, like men, firmly resolved to mam-tain your own right*. We would have yon say to the South,—if yon choose to hug to yonr bosom that system which is continually injuring and impoverishing yon; that eystem which reduces two millions and a half of native Americans in your midst to the moil |