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[29] the northern bank of the Rio Grande! Witness, the recent pregnant utterances of politicians, statesmen, and editors, who deal with slavery as a gangrene that must be cut out! Witness, the altered tone of that recreant and guilty church which, till the roar of Charleston cannon was heard, and the stars and stripes succumbed to the black flag of secession, hugged the men-stealers of the South to its bosom, and, while it could not fellowship the Church of the Puritans on account of its1 Abolitionism, could break sacramental bread with the traffickers in slaves and the souls of men!

Need I say, my faithful friend and brother, how fervently my heart returns thanks to God that we are permitted to see this day? Need I tell you that my spirit is always with you? If my own heart condemned me for infidelity to our early vows, I should be most miserable; but I can appeal to him who knoweth all things, and say, Thou knowest how truly I have cherished, warm as when the flame was first kindled, my friendship and love for those with whom I labored—

When first we saw the cloud arise,
Little as a human hand!

Continue to trust me, and let me look forward with joyful anticipations to the day when I shall once more stand upon the soil from which I was banished by the demon of slavery, and gaze upon that vision beheld by the eye of your prophet and unequalled orator—the great and (better still) the good and gracious Phillips—‘The Genius of Liberty on the banks of the Potomac, robed in light; four-and-thirty stars for her diadem, broken fetters at her feet, and an olive branch in her right hand.’2


The whirlwind of war, which was so rapidly hastening the end of slavery, was also threatening, by its absorption of public attention and drain on private resources,

1 Rev. Geo. B. Cheever's church, N. Y. City.

2 In 1856 Mr. Thompson had made a second visit to India, where he was prostrated, in the midst of his labors, by the climate, and he returned to England apparently a helpless paralytic. The timely pecuniary aid sent him by his American friends in 1859 saved him from sore distress, and doubtless hastened his recovery, and towards the close of 1860 he became the active (but untitled) and salaried agent in England of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The arrangement proved unexpectedly fortunate and important; for the Society, by thus sustaining Mr. Thompson in his extremity, saved and prepared him for the yeoman service which he was to perform in behalf of the American Government during the most critical period of the war.

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