One of the Doctor’s objections to our chosen phrase was that it was liable to be misunderstood. But, as we said at the time, “if _immediate emancipation_ expresses our leading doctrine exactly, it ought to be used and explanations of it be patiently given until the true doctrine has come to be generally understood, received, and obeyed.” Now, _immediate emancipation_ was the comprehensive phrase that did best express the right of the slave and the duty of the master. In whatever sense we used the word _immediate_, whether in regard to time or order, the word expressed just what we Abolitionists meant. We insisted upon it in opposition to those who were teaching slaveholders to defer to another generation, or to some future time an act of common humanity that was due to their fellow-men _at once_; and would be due every minute until it should be done. We insisted upon it in opposition to the popular but deceptive, impracticable, and cruel scheme which proposed to liberate the slaves on condition of their removal to Africa.
Dr. Channing further objected that “the use of the phrase _immediate emancipation_ had contributed much to spread far and wide the belief, that the Abolitionists wished immediately to free the slave from _all_ his restraints.” But ought we to have been held responsible for such a senseless, wanton misconstruction of words that had been explained a thousand times by our appointed lecturers, in our tracts, and in the “Declaration of the Sentiments, Purposes, and Plans of the American Antislavery Society,” which was published three years before Dr. Channing’s book appeared? Freemen,--Republican freemen were, are, and ever ought to be subject to the restraints of civil government, equal and righteous laws. From the commencement of our enterprise, our only demand for our enslaved countrymen has been that they should forthwith be admitted to all the rights and privileges of freemen upon the same conditions as others, after they shall have acquired (those of them who do not now possess) the qualifications demanded of others.
Still further the Doctor accused us Abolitionists of having “fallen into the common error of enthusiasts,--that of exaggerating their object, of feeling as if no evil existed but that which they opposed, and as if no guilt could be compared with that of countenancing or upholding it.” We grieved especially that he suffered this censure to drop from his pen, as, coming from him, it would repress in many bosoms the concern which was beginning to be felt more than ever before for the slaves and the slaveholders. There was no danger that we should esteem or lead others to esteem the evils of their condition to be greater than they were. All about us there was still an alarming insensibility or indifference to the subject. This could not have been made to appear more glaring than by the Doctor himself, on the 137th page of his book. “Suppose,” he there said, “suppose that millions of _white_ men were enslaved, robbed of all their rights in a neighboring country, and enslaved by a black race who had torn their ancestors from the shores on which our fathers had lived. How deeply should we feel their wrongs!” Ay, how much more deeply would even the Abolitionists feel for them! Yet why should we not all feel as much, in the case that actually existed in our country as in the one supposed? We are unable to find a reason of which we ought not to be ashamed, because it must be one based upon a cruel prejudice, the offspring of the degradation into which we had forced the black men. I really wish if there are any who think with Dr. Channing that the Abolitionists did _exaggerate_ the guilt of holding men in slavery, or consenting with slaveholders,--I really wish such persons would read Dr. Channing’s chapter on the “Evils of Slavery,” and then show us, if he can, wherein we exaggerated them.