Upright men spent their lives in
unyielding and indignant protest, not so much for any immediate result
as because they could do no otherwise,--because the constant violation
of sacred right, the constant defilement and degradation of country,
wrought so fiercely and painfully in their hearts that they could not
hold their peace. Though they expected no sudden reform, they believed
in the indestructibility of truth, and knew, therefore, that their word
should not return unto them void, but waited for some far future day
when happier harvesters should come bringing their sheaves with them.
How looks the promise now? A beneficent Providence has outstripped our
laggard hopes. The work which we had so summarily given over to the
wiser generations behind us is rapidly approaching completion beneath
the strokes of a few sharp, short years of our own. Slavery, which was
apologized for by the South, tolerated by the North, half recognized as
an evil, half accepted as a compromise, but with every conscientious
concession and every cowardly expedient sinking ever deeper and deeper
into the nation's life, stands forth at last in its real character, and
meets its righteous doom. Public opinion, rapidly sublimed in the white
heat of this fierce war, is everywhere crystallizing. Men are learning
to know precisely what they believe, and, knowing, dare maintain. There
is no more speaking with bated breath, no more counselling of
forbearance and non-intervention. It is no longer a chosen few who dare
openly to denounce the sum of all villainies; but loud and long and deep
goes up the execration of a people,--the tenfold hate and horror of men
who have seen the foul fiend's work, who have felt his fangs fastened in
their own flesh, his poison working in their own hearts' blood.
Hundreds of thousands of thinking men have gone down into his loathsome
prison-house, have looked upon his obscene features, have grappled,
shuddering, with his slimy strength; and thousands of thousands,
watching them from far-off Northern homes, have felt the chill of
disgust that crept through their souls. The inmost abhorrence of slavery
that fills the heart of this people it is impossible for language to
exaggerate. It is so strong, so wide-spread, so uncompromising, so fixed
in its determination to destroy, root and branch, the accursed thing,
that even the forces of evil and self-seeking, awed and overpowered, are
swept into the line of its procession. Good m