en were
inevitable.

Sarah speaks of the war as a retribution. "Hitherto," she says, "we
have never been a republic, but one of the blackest tyrannies that
ever disgraced the earth."

She calls attention to the fact that the South, by starting out with a
definite and declared purpose, added much to its strength. "In great
revolutions," she says, "confusion in popular ideas is fatal. The
South avoided this. She set up one idea as paramount; she seized a
great principle and uttered it. She shouted the talismanic words,
'Oppression and Liberty,' and said, 'Let us achieve our purpose or
die!' The masses, blinded by falsehood, caught the spirit of the
leaders, and verily believe they are struggling for freedom. We have
never enunciated any great truth as the cause of our uprising. We have
no great idea to rally around, and know not what we are fighting for."

Later she expresses herself very strongly concerning the selfishness
of the politicians, North and South.

"It is true there are some," she writes, "who are waging this war to
make our Declaration of Independence a fact; there is a glorious band
who are fighting for human rights, but the government, with Lincoln at
its head, has not a heart-throb for the slave. I want the South to do
her own work of emancipation. She would do it only from dire
necessity, but the North will do it from no higher motive, and the
South will feel less exasperation if she does it herself."

In another letter in 1862, she writes:--

"The negro has generously come forward, in spite of his multiplied
wrongs, and offered to help to defend the country against those who
are trying to fasten the chains on the white as well as the black. We
have impiously denied him the right of citizenship, and have virtually
said, 'Stand back; I am holier than thou.' I pray that victory may not
crown our arms until the negro stands in his acknowledged manhood side
by side in this conflict with the white man, until we have the
nobility to say that this war is a war of abolition, and that no
concession on the part of the South shall save slavery from
destruction. Whatever Lincoln and his Cabinet are carrying on the war
to accomplish, God's design is to deliver from bondage his innocent
people."

About this time Mrs. Weld published one of the most powerful things
she ever wrote, "A Declaration of War on Slavery." She and Sarah also
drew up a petition to the government for the entire abolition of
slavery, and