This text is part of:
[152]
treatment.
If you consider the work we have to do, you will not think us needlessly aggressive, or that we dig down unnecessarily deep in laying the foundations of our enterprise.
A money power of two thousand millions of dollars, as the prices of slaves now range, held by a small body of able and desperate men; that body raised into a political aristocracy by special constitutional provisions; --cotton, the product of slave labor, forming the basis of our whole foreign commerce, and the commercial class thus subsidized; the press bought up, the pulpit reduced to vassalage, the heart of the common people chilled by a bitter prejudice against the black race; our leading men bribed, by ambition, either to silence or open hostility;in such a land, on what shall an Abolitionist rely?
On a few cold prayers, mere lip-service, and never from the heart?
On a church resolution, hidden often in its records, and meant only as a decent cover for servility in daily practice?
On political parties, with their superficial influence at best, and seeking ordinarily only to use existing prejudices to the best advantage?
Slavery has deeper root here than any aristocratic institution has in Europe; and politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.
Yet we have seen European aristocracy survive storms which seemed to reach down to the primal strata of European life.
Shall we, then, trust to mere politics, where even revolution has failed?
How shall the stream rise above its fountain?
Where shall our church organizations or parties get strength to attack their great parent and moulder, the Slave Power?
Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
The old jest of one who tried to lift himself in his own basket, is but a tame picture of the man who imagines that, by working solely through existing sects and parties, he can destroy slavery.
Mechanics say nothing but an earthquake,
Lee and Shepard, 1891.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.