8. Account of March 5, 1850 Middlesex County Antislavery Society meeting in Concord (transcribed from the Liberator, April 12, 1850).
The Middlesex County Anti-Slavery Society met in the vestry of the Unitarian Church, in Concord, on Tuesday, March 5th, and was called to order by the President, Mr. Whiting. In the absence of the Secretary, Minot Pratt was chosen Secretary, pro tem.
Voted, that Mrs. Brooks, Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Bowers, be a committee to nominate officers for the Society for the coming year.
Committee reported that they nominate the present officers for re-election for the ensuing year.
The Report was accepted, and the recommendation adopted.
The following resolution was offered by W. L. Garrison:—
Resolved, That the rejection of the anti-slavery movement by the people of the United States is an act of deeper criminality than was the rejection of Jesus, as the Messiah, by the Jewish nation, eighteen hundred years ago.
Parker Pillsbury presented the following resolutions:—
Resolved, That the most alarming sign of the times is the wonderful annihilation of the national conscience and of individual conscience, as seen in the fact that seven years ago, all political parties and all political presses at the North were hostile to the annexation of Texas, and often declared themselves ready to dissolve the Union should it be achieved, but are now more and more devoted to that Union, with Texas added, and enough other territory for a hundred new States as large as the average of New England States, gained by conquest, and baptized in the blood of 45,000 of its rightful owners, and soon to be consecrated, to a great extent, to the purposes of slavery.
Resolved, That the Constitution and Union of these States are a conspiracy against justice and the rights of the people, and a direct war upon the laws of nature and of nature's God—compelling all the people to be slaveholders or slaves, and most of them to be both—swearing all the voters in it to the performance of deeds, in the suppression of insurrections, and the return of fugitive slaves, that would dishonor a confederacy of demons—instituting wars of slaughter and conquest upon Indians or Mexicans whenever the interests or lusts of slavery have required, and ravaging with fire and sword any territory the slave power may covet for its unhallowed designs;—and since such is the character of the government, it becomes the duty of every friend of Man, of Freedom, of Justice, and of God, to denounce it, and by every peaceful and proper means, to seek its entire overthrow.
Earnest and impressive speeches were made by Messrs. Garrison and Pillsbury, in support of the resolutions presented by them. Ralph Waldo Emerson also addressed the meeting, in commendation of the perseverance, self-sacrifice and heroism exhibited in the anti-slavery movement, though not fully prepared to endorse every measure proposed for the abolition of slavery. At a late hour in the evening, the meeting adjourned, sine die.
WILLIAM WHITING, President.
MINOT PRATT, Secretary pro tem.
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