Soon bitter conflicts sprang up in the breasts of these young philanthropists. The fresh-armed men began to bite and devour one another, and were well nigh consumed one of another. Yet still the great inspiration moved on, through them, in spite of them. New measures were required by the progress of the sentiment. It demanded a chance to express itself at the ballot-box, and began to feebly, but faithfully, reveal its power on this field where it stands to-day victorious. Thus steadily have advanced the conscience and the cause. The vast majority of the men of to-day have grown up under its power; for the mass of men are under forty-five years of age. The impressible youth of fifteen, who drank of this new wine when it was first pressed from the grapes of a fresh experience, is to-day the governor elect of your commonwealth. The poor youth of twenty, toiling in the solitude of western rivers and forests, learning to abhor slavery because of its contempt for honorable industry, is to-day the civil leader of the cause and country. Thus has the principle which moved our grandsires to the great work of personal liberation moved us toward the completion of their work, in the liberation of more persons than their valor saved, from a bondage infinitely worse than that which pressed them down. 2. But fears created by the rapid march of the slave power have aided in this work. The growth of this power has been a necessary complement of the corresponding growth of the abolition sentiment. The Gospel is a savor of life unto life and of death unto death. Conscience is one and the same in every man. But conscience trampled upon is sure to revenge itself by allowing the passions that expel it from its seat to assume a diabolic sovereignty. The Southern mind felt as keenly as the Northern that slavery was a sin. There was but one testimony from the whole land in our early history, and even as late as the beginning of this agitation. But when the spirit within began to be heard, saying, clearly, "Extirpate this evil. Let my oppressed go free, and break every yoke," selfinterest said, "Nay; I shall impoverish myself by so doing. My money is invested in slaves. My habits and tastes are educated in slavery. My heart inclines to it." So they resisted the Spirit of God. They trampled under foot the national life-principle. They counted the revolutionary blood shed for them an unholy thing. They turned and rent those who cast these pearls at their feet, and who called upon them to adorn themselves with their luster. They began to defend the system through the press, in the forum, on the bench, from the pulpit. They sought to extend it. They sought to open the accursed trade which should populate their wildernesses with the barbaric merchandise. They enthroned themselves in the national legislature, in the presidential chair, in the supreme court. They trod out freedom of the press, freedom of speech, almost freedom of thought, in all the Slave States. They were on the point of nationalizing slavery in the Territories, in every free State. Their children, fifty years hence, will not believe their fathers zealously advocated practices so abhorrent to human nature. There was no real change in the Southern conscience. That still told them, "You are verily guilty concerning your brother." "Slavery is the sum of all villainies." I never saw a slaveholder who did not, when he spoke his real sentiments, make this confession. A gentleman who long lived in Alabama told me he had often heard slaveholders, worth a million dollars in this property, say, "The slaves have just as much right to their freedom as I to mine." It was this conscience that made the whole South shake with undisguisable terror, when they heard that hero-martyr saying to their bondmen, "You are as free as I or your master. Here is a weapon to defend yourself, if they attempt to enslave you. Here is one who will aid you in using that weapon, if they dare to attack you." Their audacious course consummated its malignity in the murder of that man, who, every one of them knew, was in the right and doing right. For they saw, however blind we might be, that he was of the blood royal of mankind, most of whom rule the race from the scaffold. They felt that he was proving in this deed his lineal descent from the patriotic but defeated Gracchi, and Demosthenes, and Wallace, and Hampden, and Vane, and Russell, and Warren.* But time would fail me to mention the grand list of martyrs for liberty into whose front ranks they beheld him enter, who all died in the faith, not inheriting the promises. This God-defying march of the hosts of Satan upon the sacred institutions, the more sacred inspirations of the land, helped to stimulate the already quickening conscience of the North. The heaviest eyes began to open the dullest natures to stir. Every one whose heart throbbed with any of the life of their fathers, of their fathers' God, felt that the evil must be rebuked, must be repressed, must be extirpated, so far as any constitutional or moral power could do it. So the Church and the State have moved together, here slowly and cautiously, there boldly and manfully, everywhere motion, everywhere life, until the mighty work is wrought which puts our government, openly and entirely, on the side of Freedom. - This, then, is the cause, this alone the Spirit of God moving on the hearts of the children of men. "This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes." "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory." The Lord hath triumphed gloriously. "The horse and his rider," the Northern political slave and his Southern political master, "hath He cast into the sea." * See Note VIII. II. Consider the consequences of this victory, which is one in fact, though threefold in form. 1. It will suppress all efforts to extend slavery. The battle was waged at this point. Here, too, was it won. For the first time in all this long conflict the hostile parties agreed as to the object in dispute. Every previous Democratic Convention shut off the real issue from the people. The Whig and American parties, when alive, were equally careful. Tariff, banks, the Roman Catholic question, retrenchment and reform, all these have turned away the gaze of the masses from their real danger and duty. Mr. Douglas supposed that what had been would still be, and therefore attempted to get up a war-cry that should mean nothing, while under its delusion the people should again put in power their haughty tyrant. But the honesty of the slave power swept away this subterfuge. They boldly placed at the head of their columns the universal supremacy of slavery. The free sentiment hailed the conflict. The deadly embrace is passed, and slavery lies prone upon the field. A tyrant once slain is slain forever. Error can never survive its Waterloo. Freedom had often fallen, but it rose ever the more beautiful and strong from its momentary defeat. Slavery has fallen, never to rise again defiant, successful. It will rule in New York and Boston before it ever rules again at Washington. It ruled there first only by our consent. We must rehabilitate it at home before we allow it to return thither. This absolute and unquestioned gain the point, the center of the fight is almost incalculable. Some speak slightingly of it, and say nothing is done. The Fugitive Slave Act is recognized by President Lincoln as constitutional. He will favor the admission of Slave States if they come. constitutionally to the door of the nation. These are not agreeable sights. Yet, consider how unlikely they are to occur. What Slave State will seek admission to an Anti Slavery confederacy? As for the fugitive from slavery, unless vital modifications are made in the present law, the people will take care that he is not returned. Can one here be seized, and sentenced to bondage again, as Anthony Burns was, passing down State Street in broad daylight, fettered by a squad of foreign mercenaries, when more than a hundred thousand of the citizens of Massachusetts have put the most eloquent defender of the Personal Liberty Bill in the chair of State? The accursed oceanic slave trade will forever cease. New York will be relieved from the miserable honor of sending out these vessels, Savannah and Charleston, the more miserable honor of receiving their cargoes. Africa and Cuba will be girdled with a moving wall of fire through which but few of the dreadful craft can pass. If nothing more were done than is assuredly done, it is wonderful, it is worthy of unbounded thanksgivings. 2. But, secondly, we have done still more. We have set ourselves right before the world. We shall cast our influence, as a great nation, on the side of universal liberty. For years we have been a by-word and a hissing among the nations. Not a word for freedom could escape the lips of our representatives abroad, for they were bound, hand and foot, mouth and tongue, with the grave-clothes of the body of this death. Our influence has been against liberty everywhere, in every man. The conscience of the slaveholder, the conscience of the tyrants of France and Austria and Rome, were stifled in the deadly air which our government exhaled. All this is changed. America will stand forth in the glory of her earlier, better days; in a glory greater than that, for we now appear as the upholder of the rights of every man, of every hue and condition. Italians contend for the rights of Italians, Hungarians for Hungarians, Englishmen for Englishmen; we, alone, for the black race, the weakest and least favored of the children of |