ms extremely conservative; at the time,
however, it was laid on the table by the Virginia House of Delegates,
and from the Senate the author received merely "a civil acknowledgment."

Two men of the period--widely different in temper and tone, but
both earnest seekers after truth--looked forward to the future with
foreboding, one with the eye of the scientist, the other with the vision
of the seer. Hezekiah Niles had full sympathy with the groping and
striving of the South; but he insisted that slavery must ultimately be
abolished throughout the country, that the minds of the slaves should
be exalted, and that reasonable encouragement should be given free
Negroes.[1] Said he: "_We are ashamed of the thing we practice_;...
there is no attribute of heaven that takes part with us, and _we know
it_. And in the contest that must come and _will come_, there will be a
heap of sorrows such as the world has rarely seen."[2]

[Footnote 1: _Register_, XVI, 177 (May 8, 1819).]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., XVI, 213 (May 22, 1819).]

On the other hand rose Lorenzo Dow, the foremost itinerant preacher of
the time, the first Protestant who expounded the gospel in Alabama and
Mississippi, and a reformer who at the very moment that cotton was
beginning to be supreme, presumed to tell the South that slavery was
wrong.[1] Everywhere he arrested attention--with his long hair, his
harsh voice, and his wild gesticulation startling all conservative
hearers. But he was made in the mold of heroes. In his lifetime he
traveled not less than two hundred thousand miles, preaching to more
people than any other man of his time. Several times he went to Canada,
once to the West Indies, and three times to England, everywhere drawing
great crowds about him. In _A Cry from the Wilderness_ he more than
once clothed his thought in enigmatic garb, but the meaning was always
ultimately clear. At this distance, when slavery and the Civil War are
alike viewed in the perspective, the words of the oracle are almost
uncanny: "In the rest of the Southern states the influence of these
Foreigners will be known and felt in its time, and the seeds from the
HORY ALLIANCE and the DECAPIGANDI, who have a hand in those grades of
Generals, from the Inquisitor to the Vicar General and down...!!! The
STRUGGLE will be DREADFUL! the CUP will be BITTER! and when the agony is
over, those who survive may see better days! FAREWELL!"

[Footnote 1: For full study see article "Lorenzo D