n camp fires in front of the embattled host of slavery, which not
all the waters of the Mississippi, mingled as they are with blood, could
extinguish. The present will be looked to by after coming generations,
as the age of anti-slavery literature--when supply on the gallop could
not keep pace with the ever growing demand--when a picture of a Negro
on the cover was a help to the sale of a book--when conservative lyceums
and other American literary associations began first to select their
orators for distinguished occasions from the ranks of the previously
despised abolitionists. If the anti-slavery movement shall fail now,
it will not be from outward opposition, but from inward decay. Its
auxiliaries are everywhere. Scholars, authors, orators, poets, and
statesmen give it their aid. The most brilliant of American poets
volunteer in its service. Whittier speaks in burning verse to more than
thirty thousand, in the National Era. Your own Longfellow whispers, in
every hour of trial and disappointment, "labor and wait." James Russell
Lowell is reminding us that "men are more than institutions." Pierpont
cheers the heart of the pilgrim in search of liberty, by singing the
praises of "the north star." Bryant, too, is with us; and though chained
to the car of party, and dragged on amidst a whirl of{368} political
excitement, he snatches a moment for letting drop a smiling verse of
sympathy for the man in chains. The poets are with us. It would seem
almost absurd to say it, considering the use that has been made of them,
that we have allies in the Ethiopian songs; those songs that constitute
our national music, and without which we have no national music. They
are heart songs, and the finest feelings of human nature are expressed
in them. "Lucy Neal," "Old Kentucky Home," and "Uncle Ned," can make
the heart sad as well as merry, and can call forth a tear as well as a
smile. They awaken the sympathies for the slave, in which antislavery
principles take root, grow, and flourish. In addition to authors, poets,
and scholars at home, the moral sense of the civilized world is with
us. England, France, and Germany, the three great lights of modern
civilization, are with us, and every American traveler learns to regret
the existence of slavery in his country. The growth of intelligence,
the influence of commerce, steam, wind, and lightning are our allies.
It would be easy to amplify this summary, and to swell the vast
conglomeration of o