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Page 58
We do not ask for a forcible interference on your part, but only that
you will use all lawful and peaceful means to restore to this much
injured race their God-given rights. The moral and religious sentiment
of mankind must be arrayed against slave-holding, to make it infamous,
ere we can hope to see it abolished. We would ask you to set them the
example, by excluding from your pulpits, and from religious communion,
the slave-holding and pro-slavery ministers who may happen to visit this
country. We would even go further, and ask you to shut your doors
against either ministers or laymen, who are at all guilty of upholding
and sustaining this monster sin. By the cries of the slave, which come
from the fields and swamps of the far South, we ask you to do this! By
that spirit of liberty and equality of which you all admire, we would
ask you to do this. And by that still nobler, higher, and holier spirit
of our beloved Saviour, we would ask you to stamp upon the head of the
slaveholder, with a brand deeper than that which marks the victim of his
wrongs, the infamy of theft, adultery, man-stealing, piracy, and murder,
and, by the force of public opinion, compel him to "unloose the heavy
burden, and let the oppressed go free."
LETTER XXI.
_A Chapter on American Slavery._
The word Englishman is but another name for an American, and the word
American is but another name for an Englishman--England is the father,
America the son. They have a common origin and identity of language;
they hold the same religious and political opinions; they study the same
histories, and have the same literature. Steam and mechanical ingenuity
have brought the two countries within nine days sailing of each other.
The Englishman on landing at New-York finds his new neighbours speaking
the same language which he last heard on leaving Liverpool, and he sees
the American in the same dress that he had been accustomed to look upon
at home, and soon forgets that he is three thousand miles from his
native land, and in another country. The American on landing at
Liverpool, and taking a walk through the great commercial city, finding
no difficulty in understanding the people, supposes himself still in
New-York; and if there seems any doubt in his own mind, growing out of
the fact that the people have a more healthy look, seem more polite, and
that the buildings have a more substantial appearance than those he had
formerly looked upon, he has only to imagine, as did Rip Van Winkle,
that he has been asleep these hundred years.
If the Englishman who has seen a Thompson silenced in Boston, or a
Macready mobbed in New-York, upon the ground that they were foreigners,
should sit in Exeter Hall and hear an American orator until he was
hoarse, and wonder why the American is better treated in England than
the Englishman in America, he has only to attribute it to John Bull's
superior knowledge of good manners, and his being a more law-abiding man
than brother Jonathan. England and America has each its reforms and its
reformers, and they have more or less sympathy with each other. It has
been said that one generation commences a reform in England, and that
another generation finishes it. I would that so much could be said with
regard to the great object of reform in America--the system of slavery!
No evil was ever more deeply rooted in a country than is slavery in the
United States. Spread over the largest and most fertile States in the
Union, with decidedly the best climate, and interwoven, as it is, with
the religious, political, commercial, and social institutions of the
country, it is scarcely possible to estimate its influence. This is the
evil which claims the attention of American Reformers, over and above
every other evil in the land, and thanks to a kind providence, the
American slave is not without his advocates. The greatest enemy to the
Anti-Slavery Society, and the most inveterate opposer of the men whose
names stand at the head of the list as officers and agents of that
association, will, we think, assign to William Lloyd Garrison, the first
place in the ranks of the American Abolitionists. The first to proclaim
the doctrine of immediate emancipation to the slaves of America, and on
that account an object of hatred to the slave-holding interest of the
country, and living for years with his life in danger, he is justly
regarded by all, as the leader of the Anti-Slavery movement in the New
World. Mr. Garrison is at the present time but little more than
forty-five years of age, and of the middle size. He has a high and
prominent forehead, well developed, with no hair on the top of the head,
having lost it in early life; with a piercing eye, a pleasant, yet
anxious countenance, and of a most loveable disposition; tender, and
blameless in his family affections, devoted to his friends; simple and
studious, upright, guileless, distinguished, and worthy, like the
distinguished men of antiquity, to be immortalized by another Plutarch.
How many services never to be forgotten, has he not rendered to the
cause of the slave, and the welfare of mankind! As a speaker, he is
forcible, clear, and logical, yet he will not rank with the many who are
less known. As a writer, he is regarded as one of the finest in the
United States, and certainly the most prominent in the Anti-Slavery
cause. Had Mr. Garrison wished to serve himself, he might, with his
great talents, long since, have been at the head of either of the great
political parties. Few men can withstand the allurements of office, and
the prize-money that accompanies them. Many of those who were with him
fifteen years ago, have been swept down with the current of popular
favour, either in Church or State. He has seen a Cox on the one hand,
and a Stanton on the other, swept away like so much floating wood
before the tide. When the sturdiest characters gave way, when the finest
geniuses passed one after another under the yoke of slavery, Garrison
stood firm to his convictions, like a rock that stands stirless amid the
conflicting agitation of the waves. He is not only the friend and
advocate of freedom with his pen and his tongue, but to the oppressed of
every clime he opens his purse, his house, and his heart: yet he is not
a man of money. The fugitive slave, fresh from the whips and chains, who
is turned off by the politician, and experiences the cold shoulder of
the divine, finds a bed and a breakfast under the hospitable roof of Mr.
Lloyd Garrison.
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