to her, must be
fought for the Negroes' freedom. "I cannot feel easy in my conscience
to be dumb in an hour like this," she explained to Lydia, adding, "It
is so easy to feel your power for public work slipping away if you
allow yourself to remain too long snuggled in the Abrahamic bosom of
home. It requires great will power to resurrect one's soul.[143]

"I am speaking now extempore," she continued, "and more to my
satisfaction than ever before. I am amazed at myself, but I could not
do it if any of our other speakers were listening to me. I am entirely
off old antislavery grounds and on the new ones thrown up by the war."

Feeling particularly close to Lydia at this time, she gratefully
added, "What a stay, counsel, and comfort you have been to me, dear
Lydia, ever since that eventful little temperance meeting in that
cold, smoky chapel in 1852. How you have compelled me to feel myself
competent to go forward when trembling with doubt and distrust. I can
never express the magnitude of my indebtedness to you."

In the small towns of western New York, people were willing to listen
to Susan, for they were troubled by the defeats northern armies had
suffered and by the appalling lack of unity and patriotism in the
North. They were beginning to see that the problem of slavery had to
be faced and were discussing among themselves whether Negroes were
contraband, whether army officers should return fugitive slaves to
their masters, whether slaves of the rebels should be freed, whether
Negroes should be enlisted in the army.

Susan had an answer for them. "It is impossible longer to hold the
African race in bondage," she declared, "or to reconstruct this
Republic on the old slaveholding basis. We can neither go back nor
stand still. With the nation as with the individual, every new
experience forces us into a new and higher life and the old self is
lost forever. Hundreds of men who never thought of emancipation a year
ago, talk it freely and are ready to vote for it and fight for it
now.[144]

"Can the thousands of Northern soldiers," she asked, "who in their
march through Rebel States have found faithful friends and generous
allies in the slaves ever consent to hurl them back into the hell of
slavery, either by word, or vote, or sword? Slaves have sought shelter
in the Northern Army and have tasted the forbidden fruit of the Tree
of Liberty. Will they return quietly to the plantation and patiently
endure the old life of