e of our fair rivers
that has not closed over the negro seeking in death a refuge from a life
too wretched to bear; thousands of fugitives skulk along our highways,
afraid to tell their names, and trembling at the sight of a human being;
free men are kidnapped in our streets, to be plunged into that hell
of slavery; and now and then one, as if by miracle, after long years
returns to make men aghast with his tale. The press says, "It is all
right"; and the pulpit cries, "Amen." They print the Bible in every
tongue in which man utters his prayers; and they get the money to do so
by agreeing never to give the book, in the language our mothers taught
us, to any negro, free or bond, south of Mason and Dixon's line. The
press says, "It is all right"; and the pulpit cries, "Amen." The slave
lifts up his imploring eyes, and sees in every face but ours the face
of an enemy. Prove to me now that harsh rebuke, indignant denunciation,
scathing sarcasm, and pitiless ridicule are wholly and always
unjustifiable; else we dare not, in so desperate a case, throw away any
weapon which ever broke up the crust of an ignorant prejudice, roused a
slumbering conscience, shamed a proud sinner, or changed in any way the
conduct of a human being. Our aim is to alter public opinion. Did we
live in a market, our talk should be of dollars and cents, and we would
seek to prove only that slavery was an unprofitable investment. Were
the nation one great, pure church, we would sit down and reason of
"righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." Had slavery fortified
itself in a college, we would load our cannons with cold facts, and
wing our arrows with arguments. But we happen to live in the world,--the
world made up of thought and impulse, of self-conceit and self-interest,
of weak men and wicked. To conquer, we must reach all. Our object is not
to make every man a Christian or a philosopher, but to induce every one
to aid in the abolition of slavery. We expect to accomplish our object
long before the nation is made over into saints or elevated into
philosophers. To change public opinion, we use the very tools by which
it was formed. That is, all such as an honest man may touch.

All this I am not only ready to allow, but I should be ashamed to think
of the slave, or to look into the face of my fellow-man, if it
were otherwise. It is the only thing which justifies us to our own
consciences, and makes us able to say we have done, or at least tried