e, when writing for the newspapers was under discussion, Mrs. Howe remarked that in that kind of composition one felt prescribed like St. Simeon Stylites by the limitations of the column.
One of the best of her witty poems describes Boston on a rainy day, and is called Expluvior, an innocent parody on Longfellow's Excelsior, which, by the way, ought to have been called Excelsius.
The butcher came a walking flood, Drenching the kitchen where he stood. Deucalion, is your name?
I pray. Moses, he choked and slid away. Expluvior is one of the most characteristic verses; but in the last stanza she wishes to construct a dam at the foot of Beacon Hill and cause a flood that would sweep the rebel sympathizers out of Boston.
The office of the Blind Asylum was formerly near the middle of Bromfield Street on the southern side.
This is now historic ground.
Between 1850 and 1870 some of the most important national councils were held there in Dr. Howe's private office.
It was the firs
what earnest sincerity means.
Do you believe in God?
Do you believe the Bible?
John Brown believed in Jehovah and His Word.
Sincerely, for nothing was permitted to stand between the commandments of Jehovah and his obedience to them; sincerely, for while our scribes and pharisees derided him, he translated his belief into earnest deeds, and thereby proved how vain and false were their loud professions.
He was the last of the old Puritan type of Christians.
Gideon to him, and Joshua, and Moses, were not interesting historic characters merely,--as, judging from their acts, modern Christians regard them but holy examples set before us, by Deity himself, for our imitation and our guidance.
Is the Bible true?
Yes, say many modern Christians, never doubting their own sincerity, and then denounce any forcible emancipation of God's enslaved poor.
If the Bible is the true Word, it follows that it is right to slay God's enemies, if it be necessary thus to deliver God's persecuted people
what earnest sincerity means.
Do you believe in God?
Do you believe the Bible?
John Brown believed in Jehovah and His Word.
Sincerely, for nothing was permitted to stand between the commandments of Jehovah and his obedience to them; sincerely, for while our scribes and pharisees derided him, he translated his belief into earnest deeds, and thereby proved how vain and false were their loud professions.
He was the last of the old Puritan type of Christians.
Gideon to him, and Joshua, and Moses, were not interesting historic characters merely,--as, judging from their acts, modern Christians regard them but holy examples set before us, by Deity himself, for our imitation and our guidance.
Is the Bible true?
Yes, say many modern Christians, never doubting their own sincerity, and then denounce any forcible emancipation of God's enslaved poor.
If the Bible is the true Word, it follows that it is right to slay God's enemies, if it be necessary thus to deliver God's persecuted people
t the dictates of policy — because democratic journals and pro-slavery politicians have sought to create a prejudice against him for having voluntarily gone to Kansas, and solely to fight the battles of freedom: as if it had been a crime or a disgrace, instead of an illustrious, patriotic and Christian act for a Northern man to defend Northern rights; for an anti-slavery champion to oppose by the sword the armed propagandists of slavery; for a believer in the Bible to emulate the examples of Moses, Joshua, and Gideon, and obey the solemn utterances of the Most High God.
Believing God to be a Being infallible and unchangeable; believing that He once had ordered His enemies to be smitten hip and thigh; believing that the Ever Just had commanded liberty to be proclaimed throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof; John Brown did not dare to remain tending sheep at North Elba when the . American Goliath and his hosts were in the field, defying the little armies of the livin
ehalf of the poor oppressed; and though we, who are non-resistants, and religiously believe it better to reform by moral, and not by carnal, weapons, could not approve of bloodshed, yet we know thee was animated by the most generous and philanthropic motives.
Very many thousands openly approve thy intentions, though most friends would not think it right to take up arms.
Thousands pray for thee every day; and, O, I do pray that God will be with thy soul.
Posterity will do thee justice.
If Moses led out the thousands of Jewish slaves from their bondage, and God destroyed the Egyptians in the sea because they went after the Israelites to bring them back to slavery, then, surely, by the same reasoning, we may judge thee a deliverer who wished to release millions from a more cruel oppression.
If the American people honor Washington for resisting with bloodshed for seven years an unjust tax, how much more ought thou to be honored for seeking to free the poor slaves!
O, I wish I could
himself, was not going to be bound, and never was bound, by any declaration nor by any document.
He even arrived at distrusting the Bible itself, perceiving that the Bible itself was often a tyrant — much as Christ saw the tyranny of the law of Moses.
All this part of Garrison's mental activity is his true vocation.
Here he rages like a lion of Judah.
By these onslaughts he is freeing people from their mental bonds: he is shaking down the palaces of Babylon.
His age was the age of sociamade vigilance essential.
He might be outvoted, his newspaper might be taken from him, his control might be destroyed at any juncture.
He is obliged, at intervals, to throw himself into the intrigue of Anti-slavery government, with the words of Moses on his lips and some vote-getting, hall-packing device in his mind.
This was not true of the earliest years of the movement; but came about through the mighty logic of natural law as the movement spread.
Persecution purifies any new religion.
t him but the simple truth of God, which is the great instrument for the overthrow of all iniquity and the salvation of the world.
In speaking of John Brown after his raid at Harper's Ferry, he says:
Judging him by the code of Bunker Hill, we think he is as deserving of high-wrought eulogy as any who ever wielded sword or battle-axe in the cause of liberty; but we do not and we cannot approve any indulgence of the war spirit.
John Brown has perhaps a right to a place by the side of Moses, Joshua, Gideon and David, but he is not on the same plane with Jesus, Paul, Peter and John.
But these principles of Garrison did not prevent him, whenever war was actually raging, from wishing success to those who fought on the side of liberty.
As an ultra-peace man, I am prepared to say: Success to every slave insurrection in the South and in every slave country.
I thank God when men who believe in the right and duty of wielding carnal weapons are so far advanced that they will
cording to these savage codes, ennobles the shedder of blood.
In a Corsican village, the man who has last drawn blood in a great vendetta, struts about in cap and feathers, envied by every village swain, adored by every village maiden.
On the Nile, a fellah who goes into the neighbouring hamlet, and exacts blood for blood, is said to do a royal deed.
Oriental lawgivers have usually been forced to admit the principle, even while they were trying to check the practice of Blood Atonements.
Moses allows retaliation, though he places it under some restraint.
Mohammed treats it in a similar spirit.
Solon saw the absurdity of exacting tooth for tooth, and eye for eye, yet the Athenian legislator left the principle embodied in his code.
England has the merit of repudiating this savage principle.
Once, indeed, an attempt was made to introduce the principle into our legal system; but this attempt was made so long ago as the reign of Edward the Third.
After trial of the system for a si
Negro Speaker, presides in the Lower House.
Few of these senators can write their names; yet they aspire to fill the highest offices in the Government.
The Secretary of State is a Negro.
Offices which demand some aptitude in reading and writing, such as those of Attorney-general and Superintendent of Education, are left to White men, but those of higher pay and wider patronage are taken by the Blacks.
The State Treasurer is a Negro; the Adjutant and Inspector-general is a Negro.
Chief-Justice Moses is a White, but his Associate-Judge, Wright of Beaufort, is a coloured man.
Carolinian judges used to be named for life, like English judges, and were as rarely deposed from the bench as judges in the parent State; but this Conservative way of dealing with the higher magistracy has been set aside under the Reconstruction Act. A judge is now appointed for four years only, and is seldom named a second time.
His day is short, and he must make it pay. Some of the judges (I am told, o
great severity.
He predicted that they were all destined to failure, and proved this theoretically to his own satisfaction and the satisfaction of many others.
The result showed that Mr. Chase was right all the time, and the great English economist was wrong.
The entrance of such a man into the Abolitionist movement marked an era in its history.
It was the thing most needed.
He gave it a leader who, of all men then living, was most competent for leadership.
From that time he was its Moses.
The greatest service rendered to the Abolition cause by Salmon P. Chase was in pushing it forward on political lines.
There was a contest for the mastery of the Government from the hour he took command.
The movement was to be slow, sometimes halting and apparently falling back, in some respects insignificant, in all respects desperate, but there was to be no permanent defeat and no compromise.
The espousal of Abolitionism by Mr. Chase was a remarkable circumstance.
He was not an e
