behalf of those who were bound. And the churches
themselves began to feel that they were "an offence" to the world.
Every note of sympathy that fell from the pulpit was amplified into a
grand chorus of pity for the slave. And thus the leaven of human
sympathy hid in the orthodox church of New England, leavened the whole
body until a thousand pulpits were ablaze with a righteous
condemnation of the wrongs of the slaves. Even Dr. Channing came to
the conclusion that something should be "So done as not to put in
jeopardy the peace of the slave-holding States!"[19]

THE ECONOMIC ANTI-SLAVERY PARTY was headed by the industrious and
indomitable Horace Greeley. His claim to the feelings of humanity
should never be disputed; but as a practical man who sought to solve
the riddle of every-day life he placed his practical views in the
foreground. As a political economist he reasoned that slave labor was
degrading to free labor; that free labor was better than slave labor,
and, therefore, he most earnestly desired its abolition. Wherever you
turn in his writings this idea gives the edge to all his arguments
concerning slavery. "But slavery," wrote Mr. Greeley, "primarily
considered, has still another aspect--that of a natural relation of
simplicity to cunning, of ignorance to knowledge, of weakness to
power. Thomas Carlyle, before his melancholy decline and fall into
devil-worship, truly observed, that the capital mistake of Rob Roy was
his failure to comprehend that it was cheaper to buy the beef he
required in the Grassmarket at Glasgow than to obtain it without
price, by harrying the lowland farms. So the first man whoever imbibed
or conceived the fatal delusion that it was more advantageous to him,
or to any human being, to procure whatever his necessities or his
appetites required by address and scheming than by honest work--by the
unrequited rather than the fairly and faithfully recompensed toil of
his fellow-preachers--was, in essence and in heart, a slave-holder,
and only awaited opportunity to become one in deed and practice.... It
is none the less true, however, that ancient civilization, in its
various national developments, was habitually corrupted, debauched,
and ultimately ruined by slavery, which rendered labor dishonorable,
and divided society horizontally into a small caste of the wealthy,
educated, refined, and independent, and a vast hungry, sensual,
thriftless, and worthless populace; rendered impossible the
pr