John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[519] peace we had achieved. I ought to say, however, that a great deal more of the credit for this crowning result of emancipation and liberty was due to the abolitionists than they have received, or perhaps ever will receive, even in the verdict of impartial history. They did nothing directly to bring about freedom; they struck off the fetters of not a single slave; but they had awakened by their long labors, by their persistent efforts in the face of every obstacle, a moral sentiment which was active in the hearts of the whole country, and which, of itself, contributed much to the victory that right and liberty and conscience finally achieved.

While this supreme agitation was going forward, every other sort of agitation appeared along with it. Moral principles were evoked and attached to things that apparently had no relations to morality. Non-resistance was one of these moral principles. It was wrong to use force, we were told. The advocates of this theory averred that no government should stand on force. If it is force that finally decides, where is your republican government? We might as well have despotism. Our ideal is a government of intelligence, of conviction, of conscience, and of moral duty. I remember that this party of non-resistance proved to be pretty large. Its doctrine was that you must never resist physical constraint. If a man struck you on one cheek, turn the other to him; overcome evil with good. Accordingly, there were many men, and men of bright intelligence and genuine culture, who refused to be a party in the operations of government, and who would not hold any office. Edmund Quincy, in Boston, one of the most charming men I have ever known, rejected his commission as a justice of the peace, which Governor Everett sent to him, because he could not conscientiously hold any office the exercise of which implied the use of physical force.

Some of those moral standards which were set up at that time seem to us nowadays to have been fine-spun and unsubstantial. I remember one of my friends, the late Mr. Bronson Alcott, a gentleman of distinction in his day, a philosopher and a writer of singular subtlety and elevation.