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Sir, Please accept this and exhibit it to your neighbors, a copy of a document which we are intending to distribute very extensively through the South and which we are tryst will give birth to a ____ that shall result not only in the freedom of the blacks, but also in the political, pecuniary, educational, moral, and social advantage of the present non-slaveholding whites. Please let me hear from you often, informing me of the frugnty(?) of the work. Direct to me at
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To the Non Slaveholders of the South
We present you herewith “A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery,” and solicit your aid to carry it into execution.
Your numbers, combined with those of the slaves, will give you all power. You have but to use it, and the work is done.
The following self-evident principles of justice and humanity will serve as guides to the measures proper to be adopted. These principles are–
1. That the slaves have a natural right to their liberty.
2. That they have a natural right to compensation (so far as the property of the slaveholders and their abettors can compensate them) for the wrongs they have suffered.
3. That so long as the governments, under which they live, refuse to give them liberty or compensation, they have the right to take it by stratagem or force.
4. That it is the duty of all, who can, to assist them in such an enterprise.
In rendering this assistance, you will naturally adopt these measures.
1. To ignore and spurn the authority of all the corrupt and tyrannical political institutions, which the slaveholders have established for the security of their crimes.
2. Soon as may be, to take the political power of your States into your own hands, and establish governments, that shall punish slaveholding as a crime, and also give to the slaves civil actions for damages for the wrongs that have already been committed against them.
3. Until such new governments shall be instituted, to recognize the slaves as free men, and as being the rightful owners of the property, which is now held by their masters, but which would pass to them, if justice were done: to justify and assist them in every effort to acquire their liberty, and obtain possession of such property, by stratagem or force: to hire them as laborers, pay them their wages, and defend them meanwhile against their tyrants; to sell them fire arms, and teach them the use of them; to trade with them, buying the property they may have taken from their oppressors, and paying them for it; to encourage and assist them to take possession of the lands they cultivate, and the crops they produce, and appropriate them to their own use; and in every way possible to recognize them as being now the rightful owners of the property, which justice, if administered, would give them, in compensation for the injuries they have received.
4. To join vigilance committees, or Leagues of Freedom, in every neighborhood or township, whose duty it shall be to stand in the stead of the government, and do that justice for the slaves, which the government refuses to do: and especially to arrest, try, and chastise (with their own whips) all slaveholders, who shall beat their slaves, or restrain them of their liberty: and compel them to give deeds of emancipation, and conveyances of their property, to their slaves.
5. To treat, and teach the negros to treat, all active abettors of the slaveholders, as you and they treat the slaveholders themselves, both in person and property.
Finally, we say to correspond with all us of the north. Let each person who receives one of the sheets sending his letters to the one from when he receives it. with liberty to publish them in northern papers.
This correspondence, we are confidant, will be a more interesting literature than the South has ever furnished and will enlist the feelings of the northern people to such a degree that we shall be induced to go in large numbers to your assistance whenever you shall need us.
Perhaps some may say that this taking of property, by the slaves, would be stealing, and should not be encouraged. The answer is, that it would not be stealing; it would simply taking justice into their own hands, and redressing their own wrongs. The state of slavery is a state of war. In this case it is a just war, on the part of the negroes– a way for liberty, and the recompense of injuries; and necessity justifies them in carrying it on by the only means their oppressors have left to them. In war, the plunder of enemies is as legitimate as the killing of them; and stratagem is as legitimate as open force. The right of the slaves, therefore, in this war, to take property, is as clear as their right to take life; and their right to do it secretly, is as clear as their right to do it openly. And as this will probably be their most effective mode of operation for the present, they ought to be taught, encouraged, and assisted to do it to the utmost, so long as they are unable to meet their enemies in the open field. And to call this taking of property stealing, is as false and unjust as it would be to call the taking of life in just war, murder.
It is only those, who have a false and superstitious reverence for the authority of governments, and have contracted the habit of thinking that the most tyrannical and iniquitous laws have the power to make that right, which is naturally wrong, or that wrong, which is naturally right, who will have any doubt as to the right of the slaves (and those who would assist them) to make war, to all possible extent, when the property of the slaveholders, and their abettors
We are unwilling to take the responsibility of advising any general insurrection, or any taking of life, until we of the North go down, to take part in it, in such numbers as to insure a certain and easy victory. We therefore advise that, for the present, operations be confined to the seizure of property, and the chastisement of individual slaveholders, and their accomplices, and that these things be done only so far as they can be done, without too great danger to the actors.
We specially advise the flogging of individual slaveholders. This is a case where the medical principle, that like cures like, will certainly succeed. Give the slaveholders, then, a taste of their own whips. Spare their lives, but not their backs. The arrogance they have acquired by the power of the lash upon others, will be soon taken out of them, when the same scourge shall be applied to themselves. A band of ten or twenty determined negroes, well armed, having their rendezvous in the forests, coming out upon the plantations, by day or night, seizing individuals slaveholders, stripping them, and flogging them soundly, in the presence of their own slaves, would soon abolish slavery over a large district.
The more bold and resolute slaves should be encouraged to desert from plantations in bands, establishing forts in the forests and there collect stones, horses, everything that enable them to sustain themselves and carry their warfare where the slaveholders.
These bands could also do a good work by kidnapping individual slaveholders, taking them into the forest, and holding them as hostages for the good behavior of the whites remaining on the plantations; compelling them also to execute deeds of emancipation, and conveyances of their property, to their slaves. These contracts could probably never afterward be successfully disavowed on the ground of duress (especially after new governments, favorable to liberty, should be established) inasmuch as such contracts would be nothing more than justice; and men may rightfully be coerced to do justice. Such contracts would be intrinsically as valid as the treaties by which conquered nations make satisfaction for the injustice which caused the war.
The more bold and resolute slaves should be encouraged to form themselves into bands, build forts in the forests, and there collect arms, stores, horses, every thing, that will enable them to sustain themselves, and carry on their warfare upon the slaveholders.
Another important measure, on the part of the slaves, will be to disarm their masters, so far as that is practicable, by seizing and conceding their weapons whenever opportunity offers.
When the slaves on a plantation are not powerful or courageous enough to resist, they should be encouraged to desert, in a body, temporarily, especially at harvest time, so as to cause the crops to perish for want of hands to gather them.
Many other ways will suggest themselves to you, and to the slaves, by which the slaveholders can be annoyed and injured, without causing any general outbreak, or shedding of blood.
White rascals of the South! Willing
tools of the slaveholders! You, who drive slaves to their labor, hunt them with
dogs, and flog them for pay, without asking any questions! We have a word specially
for you. You are one of the main pillars
of the slaves system. You stand ready to
do all that vile and inhuman work, which must be done by somebody, but which
the more decent slaveholders themselves will not do. Yet we have heard one good report even
of you. It is, that you have no such
prejudices against color, nor against liberty, as that
you would not as willingly earn money by helping as slave to
Nonslaveholders
generally of the South! If it is
right for the slaves to take the property of their masters, to compensate their
wrongs, it is right for you to help them.
Your numbers, compared with those of the slaveholders, are as five or
six to one. It will be perfectly easy
for you, by combining with the slaves, to put them in possession of the
plantations in which they labor, and of all the property upon them. They could afford to pay you well for doing
them such a service. They could afford
to let you share with them in the division of the property taking. We hope you will adopt this measure. It will not only be right in itself; it will
be the noblest act of your lives, provided you do not take too large a share
to yourselves, and provided also that you afterwards faithfully protect the slaves
in their liberty, and the property assigned to them.
Finally, we say to correspond with all us of the north. Let each person who receives one of the sheets sending his letters to the one from when he receives it. with liberty to publish them in northern papers. This correspondence will be a more interesting literature than the South has ever furnished and will enlist the feelings of the northern people to such a degree that we shall be induced to go, in large numbers to your assistance whenever you shall need us.