Anti - Slavery Addresses of 1844 and 1815. By Salmon Portland Chase
and Charles Dexter Cleveland. (Low, Son, and Marston.)—The two addresses contained in this volume are respectively the Pennsylvania address of 1844, and the Cincinnati address of 1845. An appendix is added containing notes to the second address, and a letter to the managers of the Philadelphia Bible Society, giving Professor Cleveland's reasons for his resignation of his post as their President. If these addresses are read now with interest, it will be partly on account of the ability of the second, and partly on account of the state of things which existed at the time when they were delivered. "We fought," says
Professor Cleveland, with the quaintness of phrase which belongs to him, and which is preserved throughout his address, " with the moral weapons of justice, conscience, and the word of God, but urged at the same time that all these should be consummated at the ballot-box."' And this sentence is, to some extent, significant of both addresses, though the second, which is the work of Chief Justice Chase, is by far the more cogent in its arguments, and the more enduring in its merits. The notes to this Cincinnati address show us what was the nature of the slavery which the Southern and Western Liberty Convention met to oppose, and in this respect the book will be of use as a memorial of those efforts and an early history of the campaign.
Previous page
