May 8, 1860 — American Anti-Slavery Society, Cooper Institute, New York City

This is generally known as the platform of one idea — that is negro slavery. In a certain sense this may be true, but the most casual observation of this whole anti-slavery movement, of your lives, conventions, public speeches and journals, show this one idea to be a great humanitarian one. The motto of your leading organ, “The world is my country and all mankind my countrymen,” proclaims the magnitude and universality of this one idea, which takes in the whole human family, irrespective of nation, color, caste, or sex, with all their interests, temporal and spiritual — a question of religion, philanthropy, political economy, commerce, education and social life on which depends the very existence of this republic, of the state, of the family, the sacredness of the lives and property of Northern freemen, the holiness of the marriage relation, and perpetuity of the Christian religion. Such are the various phases of the question you are wont to debate in your conventions. They all grow out of and legitimately belong to that so-called petty, insignificant, annoying subject, which thrusts upon its head everywhere in Church and State — “the eternal nigger.” But in settling the question of the negro’s rights, we find out the exact limits of our own, for rights never clash or interfere; and where no individual in a community is denied his rights, the mass are the more perfectly protected in theirs; for whenever any class is subject to fraud or injustice, it shows that the spirit of tyranny is at work, and no one can tell where or how or when the infection will spread. The health of the body politic, depends on the sound condition of every member. Let but the finest nerve, or weakest muscle, be disused, & the whole man suffers, just so the humbled & most ignorant citizen cannot be denied his rights without deranging the whole system of government!! It was thought a small matter to kidnap a black man in Africa, and set him to work in the rice swamps of Georgia; but when we look at the panorama of horrors that followed that event, at all the statute laws that were enacted to make that act legal, at the perversion of man’s moral sense and innate love of justice in being compelled to defend such laws; when we consider the long, hard tussle we have witnessed here for near a century between the spirit of Liberty and Slavery, we may, in some measure, appreciate the magnitude of the wrong done to that one, lone, friendless negro, who, under the cover of darkness and the star-span- gled banner, was stolen from his African hut and lodged in the hold of the American slaver. That one act has, in its consequences, convulsed this Union. It has corrupted our churches, our politics, our press; laid violent hands on Northern freemen at their own firesides; it has gagged our statesmen, and stricken our Northern Senators dumb in their seats; yes, beneath the flag of freedom, Liberty has crouched with fear. That grand declaration of rights made by William Lloyd Garrison, while yet a printer’s boy, was on a higher plane than that of ’76. His was uttered with the Christian’s view of the dignity of man, the value of the immortal being; the other but from the self-respect of one proud race. But, in spite of noble words, deeds of thirty years of protest, prayers, and preaching, slavery still lives, the negro toils on in his weary bondage, his chains have not yet melted in the intense heat of the sun of righteousness; but in the discussion of this question, in grappling with its foes, how many of us have worked out our salvation. What mountains of superstition have been rolled off the human soul!! I have always regarded Garrison as the great missionary of the gospel of Jesus to this guilty nation, for he has waged an uncompromising warfare with the deadly sins of both Church & state. My own experience is no doubt that of many others. In the darkness & gloom of Calvanism [sic] I was slowly sawing off the chains of my spiritual bondage when for the first time I met [this great apostle of antislavery Garrison in London, & [few] bold strokes from the hammer of his truth & I was free. Only those [who have fully believed that gloomy faith] who have lived all their lives under the dark clouds of vague undefined fears can appreciate the joy of a doubting soul suddenly born again into the kingdom of reason & free though [The] [As] bondage of the priest ridden is for when he first called this American church to its awful reckoning is not less galling than the slave because we do not see the chains [,] the indelible scars, the festering wounds, the deep degradation of all the powers of the Godlike mind to [Garrison] [this radical antislavery movement] woe more than any other one [man] of our day all that we have of religious freedom, but for [this] [?] I doubt whether our Cheevers, or Beechers [or Syng’s] would have yet found back bone enough to stand where they now do, for when [he] the American [?] church was first called [to] [our] [church] to its awful reckoning it was as dead as the twelve apostles of solid silver [when] which Cromwell melted [them] into coin & sent [them] through the English nation to do the will of their Master.

I do not believe all history affords another such example as this so called Garrisoning conspiracy, a body of education men of decided talent swath rank & position standing for a quarter of a century battling a whole nation church & state, law & public sentiment, without the shadow of ever wavering, turning, or faltering, as if chained to the great Gibraltar truths of human freedom & equality. This unheard of steadfastness [of a body of men] can only be accounted for in the fact that woman too is represented in this conspiracy. Yes the Mary’s and the Martha’s have gathered round the prophet of our day, with noble words & deeds & holy sympathy, they have cheered [their] exile, from the love & honor of their own false countrymen, at their family altars [he] then has been remembered & unseen spirits of the brave & true have hovered o’er him & rejoiced in these true sons of earth. Yes this is the only organization in God’s [footstool] where the humanity of woman is recognized & then the are only men who have ever echoed back her cries for justice & equality I shall never forget our champions in the worlds convention, how nobly Phillips did speak & how still more nobly Garrison would not speak [atall] because woman was there denied her rights there. Think of a world’s of this radical antislavery movement is not to the African slave alone, but to the slaves of custom creed & sex as well convention & one half the world left out. Shame on the women of this nation who help to swell the cry of infidel against men like them. — All time would not be long enough to pay the debt of gratitude we owe these noble men who spoke for us when we were dumb, who roused us to a sense of our own rights, to the dignity of our high calling. No the mission of this Radical Anti-Slavery Movement is not to the African slave alone, but to the slaves of custom, creed & sex as well & most faithfully has [he] it done [his] its work. To appreciate the magnitude & benevolence of [his] its mission, look but a moment at what fear has done from the beginning, at what an abject helpless slave man has ever been to this worst of tyranny. Behold how long through ignorance he crouched in fear before the wonders of the slave system, the sun the moon, the stars the elements, the convulsions of nature, the accidents by sea & land, pestilence & famine, how long in the follies & vices of man, he has seen the finger of God, in fact we are but just now emerging from the savage idea that God is the special patron of all human calamities of war, slavery, & civil governments of violence & force (Has not man enough to fear; that is outward, that is external to himself, the accidents of earth & air & fire & water — his ignorance of the laws of life & death, is it not enough that all material things combine to crush his soul in slavish fear — shall man himself be his own worst enemy shall he bend the whole energy of his mind to conjure up new powers & worlds of wretchedness & woe? — Shall he fatten his mind with vain speculations of an internal hell, a royal Heaven an aristocracy of saints, an arch fiend to torment & a God who laughs at his calamities. You may look through all the mysteries of nature & you will find no inflictions on the human family so terrible & so protracted as those which man has conjured up for himself. What are all the accidents at sea compared with the infernal tortures of the Spanish inquisition? What is a shipwreck to a conversion to the gloomy doctrines of a Calvin? What is death by lightening to a life long fear of hell? Who that has ever believed in the dogmas of the popular theology, that has for years gone mourning, groaning, fasting & praying in that slough of despond can fail to rejoice in the emancipation of any from such darkness & bondage & “Who that sees a mind oppressed with the traditions of ages, in its first agonizings for life & love & law would dare to obstruct its vision? — who would check its earnest longings with the cry behold a mystery. Who would bound its hopes, or deny its rights to explore the universe for facts & thoughts to feed the soul upon or to find comfort if it may in one great law alone The weary traveller long tossed about at sea is filled with joy to find himself on land once more. How good it is to stand upright & firm to feel no motion swelling heaving up & down  “And sweeter far than foothold firm on solid land Is to the soul a faith that it can understand” As we rejoice this day in our deliverance from that sad train of fears & errors that have so long crippled & dwarfed [the] [sons of earth] the greatest minds of earth, as we thank the Lord that we are neither Hindus Hottentots Mahometans or New York Observer  [presbyterians] Christians, let us seek a new & holier baptism for the work that lays for each of us in the future. The last fear from which man may hope deliverance is the fear of man. To this glorious freedom did the immortal John Brown arrive He feared neither man nor God. He was made perfect in love; the future was bright & beautiful to him for he had done the will of his Father & with joy he went out to meet him How grand, how calmly dignified were his last days on earth. In his noble generosity & self sacrifice, in his divine love for rights & justice & humanity; how like a God he seemed among the petty tyrants who surrounded him. It has filled me with amazement to find any American citizens insensible to the holy grandeur of his life & death, Noble John Brown thou wert true to thyself, thy race & loyal to thy God I ask no higher honor in the gift of this nation for any sons of mine than a gallows, & a grave like thine. — As these sons now gather round me & ask questions about different nations, governments & law, think you it is with pride I read to them our constitutions, statute laws & late judicial decisions on great questions of human rights?

Ah no, Mr President, it is with the deepest sorrow that I check the budding patriotism in their young [minds] hearts, that I unveil to them our falsehood & hypocrisy in the face of those grand & glorious declarations of freedom & equality which when first proclaimed at the mouth of the [Cannon] raised us head & shoulders above the nations of the earth. It is all important in a republican govt that our laws be always on the side of justice [& humanity]. Here where we have neither Pope, or King, no royal family, crown, or sceptre, no nobility rank, or class, nothing outward,  to cultivate, or command our veneration. Law; the immutable principles of right, are all & everything to us. See to it you who have the best interests of our republic in your care, that your laws keep pace with public sentiment. If you would have us teach our sons a . . .

Must they degrade not the mothers who gave them life a sacred reverence for law so frame your constitutions & your codes that in yielding obedience to their requirements, they are not false to the holy claims of Community.

No one can be more awake than I am to all the blessings of a republican form of government nor as a mother more apprehensive lest her sons should confound liberty with license, here where individual responsibilities are so great & the influence of one so all-powerful I fain would have then [all] lovers of law & order & meekly to suffer wrong themselves if need be to preserve it, but when the panting fugitive

Mr President [,] Yes I must ever teach them that man alone is divine. His words & works are fallible His institutions however venerable with age & authority, his constitutions laws & interpretations of holy writ must all prove false, — that alone is sacred that can fully meet the wants of the immortal soul, — that can stand the test of time & eternity.

throws himself on our generosity & hospitality. I dare not check the noble God given impulses of their natures to place the man above all law.* On this platform are the only wise conservatives of the nation, the only men who would compel obedience to the laws by bringing them into harmony with the everlasting principles of right. [These are] the only union meetings that can effectively keep off dissolution by [constructing] dispelling that dangerous miasma of slavery, which has ever proved so fatal to republicanism so deadly to all national virtue & strength. In conversation with Reverend gentleman not long ago, I chanced to speak of the injustice done to woman in [denying any pew holders a right to vote in church matters, Ah! said he so far from complaining your heart [ought to] should go out in thankfulness that you are an American woman, for in no country in the world does woman hold so high a position as here!!! Why sir said I, you must be very ignorant or very false. Is my political position as high as that of Victoria, Queen of the mightiest nation on the Globe? — Are not nearly two million native born American women at this very hour doomed to the foulest slavery that angels ever wept to witness. Are they not doubly damned, as immortal beasts of burthen in the field, & sad mothers of a most accursed race. Are they not raised for the express purpose of lust, are they not chained & driven in the slave coffle at the crack of the whip of an unfeeling driver, are they not sold on the auction block, are they not exposed naked to the coarse [gaze] jests & [brutal] voluptuous gaze of brutal men, are they not trained up in ignorance of all laws both human & divine?! denied the right to read the Bible!!! For them whom there is no sabbath! no Jesus!! — no Heaven!! — no hope!! — no holy mission of wife & mother! — no privacy of home; — nothing sacred to look for, but an eternal sleep, in death, & the grave!! — And there are the daughters & sisters of the first men in the Southern States Think of Fathers & Brothers selling their own flesh on auction block, exposing [exposing] beautiful women of refinement & education daughters & sisters in a[n] New Orleans market & selling them body & soul, to the absolute will of the highest bidder, & this is the condition of woman in christian America & priests dare look me in the face & tell me that for blessings such as these But I am a christian a follower of Jesus & whatever is done unto one of the least of these my sisters is done unto me. Though in the person of the sad slave mother you have bound me with heavy burthens, most grievous to bear my heart [ought to] should go out in thankfulness, no proud [?]. — You may [enclose] your soul in holy robes & hide your manhood in a pulpit & like the Pharisee[s] of old turn your face away from the sufferings of your race, but I am a christian, a follower of Jesus. Whatever is done unto one of [these the] the least [least] of these my sisters [for whom my savior bled & died, is done also to me.] is done also unto me. Though you have bound me with heavy burthens most grievous to bear you have done all you could to quench the spark of immortality which from the throne of God quickened [us] me into being, — though you have left [us] me no vehicle of thought — though you have made the letters of [Cadmus]  the English language as dead to [us] me as Egyptian hieroglyphics, yet [we] [I] can I still talk with God. From majestic rivers & mighty forests, [we] I have learned his power, whilst gentle murmuring notes & the music of the woods have told [us] me of his love. — yes outside of [our] my sad [hurt] slave life — in [the] gay flowers & [the] songs of happy birds in the spring breezes & such orange groves of [our] my southern home[s] [we] I sometimes feel the pulsations of the great heart of God. He comes to [us] me in all his works. [We] I have worshiped him in the glorious sun & moon & stars & [dark northern] saved my soul.

in their silent majesty & beauty — — [we] I have asked the everlasting hills that in their [great grandeur] upward yearning seemed to touch the Heavens, if I an immortal being[s] though clothed in womanhood [were] was made for the vile purposes to which [the] proud Saxon man has doomed [them] me? & in solemn chorus they all chanted no! no! no! — [We] I have turned [our] my eyes within [& asked these weary souls] I have asked this bleeding heart, so full of love to God & man, so generous & self sacrificing, ever [filled with upward] longing[s] for the pure, the holy, the divine if these graceful forms, this soft & tender flesh was made but to crawl & shiver in the cold, foul, embrace of a southern tyrant, & in stifled sobs [they have sighed] it answered no, ah! no. Thank you oh christian priests, meekly [we] I will take your insults, taunts & sneers — to you [our] my gratitude is due for all the peculiar blessings of [this hour], — for you have had the morals of this nation in your keeping. [Thank you for] Behold the depths into which you have plunged [me] the bottomless pit of human misery!! But perchance your head grows dizzy to look down so far!! & your heart faint to see what tortures I can bear!! It is enough!! I rejoice that is has been given to woman to [taste] drink very dregs of human wretchedness & woe for now by an eternal law of matter & mind when the reaction comes upward, upward, still upward she shall rise, behold him for whom your priestly robes — your bloody altars, your [?] incense, your steepled synagogues — she shall stand secure in holy moments mind [c?] of dazzling radiance to which in your grips vision, you shall not dare [not] even to lift your eyes

Eloquently & earnestly as noble men have denounced slavery on this platform, they have been able to take only an objective view. They can describe the general features of that infernal system — the horrors of the African slave trade, the agonizing sufferings of the middle-passage, and auction-block, the slave-pen and coffle, the diabolism of the internal traffic, the cruel severing of family ties, the hopeless degradation of woman; all that is outward they can see; but a privileged class can never conceive the feelings of those who are born to contempt, to inferiority, to degradation. Herein is woman more fully identified with the slave than man can possibly be, for she can take the subjective view. She early learns the misfortune of being born an heir to the crown of thorns! to  martyrdom! to womanhood! for while the man is born to do whatever he can, for the woman and the negro there is no such privilege. There is a Procrustean bedstead ever ready for them, body and soul, and all mankind stand on the alert to restrain their impulses [to clip her wings] check their aspirations, fetter their limbs, lest, in their freedom and strength, in their full development, they should take an even platform with proud man himself. To you, white man, the world throws wide her gates; the way is clear to wealth, to fame, to glory, to renown; the high place of independence and honor and trust are yours; all your efforts are praised and encouraged; all your successes are welcomed with loud hurrahs and cheers; but the black man and the woman are born to shame. The badge of degradation is the skin and sex — the scarlet letter so sadly worn upon the breast. Children, even, can define the sphere of the black man, and the most ignorant Irishman hiss him into it, while striplings, mere swaddlings of law and divinity, can talk quite glibly of woman’s sphere, and pedant priests at the alter discourse most lovingly of her holy mission to cook his meat, and bear him children, and minister to his sickly lust.

Well, thank Heaven. there is one free being in the universe for whom mortal tongue has not yet presumed to bound a sphere!! Where rights are limitless as space. Let us drop the curtain now in life’s sad drama & from their limbo let the black man & the woman extract what fun they may from the gambols of the free white man. Behind our fans & banjo’s we may laugh at least at this awkward somersets in church & state — how often in his grand, lofty bumbling his head is where his heels should be, the comic of the clown is not always [outside], for oft in manly form, neath stove pipe hat, long hair & flowing beard there is nought but folly in the words & ways. In the nations councils do but look at him, reason & logic now give place to arms & the bullets there outweighs the brains. In ecclesiastic conventions see him too he sighs & farts & prays & asks a special revelation from the throne of God to teach him truths as simple as the A, B, C, their hearts lie in their bread & butter. Poor man he knows too well he’s failed in all the arts of war & government & social life & now to get beyond the sneers of woman in very shame, but with a show of bravery, he hies him off to explore new regions round the northern pole, & in solitary grandeur takes an [upward] cur to find a home beyond the [dinds] In your aerial flights take heed & do not cross the path of Venus or the Moon for shes up there revolve round great Suns of right & truth, but in all your wanderings our best wishes go with you, lay yourselves down in peace in your icy northern

The women will ne’er pursue you there, — no whilst you choose to starve & freeze in your airy castles & sleep your six months night away, we shall remain faithful [?] of the dinner put the old arm chair & the cradle though perchance we may now & then stray on platforms such as this just to remind you  that slaves still live in the home of the free [&] brave.

Source: Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers: Speeches and Writings, 1848-1902; Library of Congress.