erywhere outside of New England, its home; the daily press, the public
lecture, the creation of an American literature, all Northern; the
growth of all institutions of learning and means of intellectual and
artistic cultivation unparalleled in any other age or land. No
well-informed person could also deny the astonishing progress in
furnishing the means of religious instruction, the multiplication of
churches, great ecclesiastical organizations, and philanthropic leagues.
Notwithstanding the apparent absorption of the North in its material
prosperity, no people ever was so busy in furnishing itself with the
means of spiritual improvement; and though a population of several
millions of ignorant and superstitious foreigners was thrown in upon it
during these eventful years, it came out at the end the most intelligent
people, the best provided with the apparatus of religion, that was ever
known.

But there was one element yet wanting to assure the right usage of all
this wealth of material, intellectual, and ecclesiastical power. This
was what the slaveholding aristocracy saw at once to be the fatal omen
for their cause, and nicknamed 'Abolitionism.' _Abolitionism, as
recognized by the Slave Power, is nothing more nor less than the
religious reverence for man and his natural rights._ This moral respect
for the nature and rights of all men has always encountered the peculiar
scorn of aristocracies, and no men have been so bitterly persecuted in
history as those who represented the religious opposition to despotism.
The Hebrew aristocracy in old Palestine called this sentiment 'atheism'
in Jesus Christ, and crucified Him. The pagan aristocracy called it a
'devilish superstition' in the early Christians, and slaughtered them
like cattle. The priestly and civil absolutism of the sixteenth century
called it 'fanaticism' in the Dutch and German reformers, and fought it
eighty years with fire and rack and sword. The church and crown
nicknamed it 'Puritanism,' and persecuted it till it turned and cut off
the head of Charles the First, and secured religious liberty. The slave
aristocracy stigmatized it 'Abolitionism,' and let loose upon it every
infernal agency in its power.

One great man, yet alive, but not yet recognized as he will be, was the
representative of this religious reverence for the rights of man. Lloyd
Garrison has been, for the last twenty-five years, the best-hated man in
these Northern States, not because he fail