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Will the young men take their stand, and throw off this incubus?
I say, Mr. Chairman, let us strike for revolution.
Let us drive slavery from our soil, and never allow a man to be put on trial on the question whether he is a man or a beast.
How long shall this last?
I hope to live to see the hour of triumph; and as I mark the spirit that pervades this assembly, I can hardly help crying out, Hallelujah!
A comparatively new-comer in the anti-slavery ranks,
the Rev. T. W. Higginson, who followed
Mr. Wright, saw and expressed the tendency of current events with a distinctness close akin to prophecy:
It is good for us to have been here, Sir. I have felt it almost1 every moment of the afternoon; and when I have looked around this hall, and seen alternately the smiles upon the lips of noble women, and the tears in the eyes of brave men,—seen them as well as I could for the closer tears that dimmed my own,—I have felt the same hope with the last speaker, that the younger among us, especially those who cannot speak from personal memory of the “inside ” or the “ outside ” of this hall, on the day we celebrate—that these young persons, from this Anniversary, may at least rekindle the enthusiasm of their self-devotion.
Mr. Chairman, one sentence spoken by Mr. Garrison sunk deep into my heart this afternoon: “Things are so changed around us,” he said.
It is not for me here and now to question one word of his; but my heart asked my intellect, Are things so changed, after all?
Is the Massachusetts of 1855 so transformed from the Massachusetts of 1835?
Is State Street so utterly changed now from what it was when it poured forth its base-hearted myriads then?
Is it true that all the hard work is done, no great duties left, and no great demands made upon us—us, whose misfortune it is, not our fault, that we could not bear the yoke of twenty years ago?
He did not mean it—I know he did not mean it; for it is not true, and therefore he did not mean it. What is that great change in which we exult?
The abolitionists of Massachusetts have labored for twenty years, and what have they conquered?
What have they conquered? The right of free speech!
They have conquered the right to meet in Stacy Hall and call their souls their own!
But what else? . . .
If this is the result of those magnificent labors and sacrifices of twenty years, how long, do you think, are the labors and
