" "The phrases men are
accustomed," says Goethe, "to repeat incessantly, end by becoming
convictions, and ossify the organs of intelligence." I cannot accept
you, therefore, as my jury. I appeal from Festus to Csar, from the
prejudice of our streets to the common-sense of the world, and to your
children.
Every thoughtful and unprejudiced mind must see that such an evil as
slavery will yield only to the most radical treatment. If you consider
the work we have to do, you will not think us needlessly aggressive,
or that we dig down unnecessarily deep in laying the foundations of our
enterprise. A money power of two thousand millions of dollars, as the
prices of slaves now range, held by a small body of able and desperate
men; that body raised into a political aristocracy by special
constitutional provisions; cotton, the product of slave labor, forming
the basis of our whole foreign commerce, and the commercial class thus
subsidized; the press bought up, the pulpit reduced to vassalage, the
heart of the common people chilled by a bitter prejudice against the
black race; our leading men bribed, by ambition, either to silence or
open hostility;--in such a land, on what shall an Abolitionist rely?
On a few cold prayers, mere lip-service, and never from the heart? On
a church resolution, hidden often in its records, and meant only as a
decent cover for servility in daily practice? On political parties, with
their superficial influence at best, and seeking ordinarily only to use
existing prejudices to the best advantage? Slavery has deeper root here
than any aristocratic institution has in Europe; and politics is but the
common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.
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