The galvanic battery may be arranged and charged, every plate, wire, and
fluid being in its appropriate place; but, until some hand shall bring
together the extremities of the conducting medium, in vain might we
expect to elicit the latent fire.

Every heart may throb with the feeling of benevolence, and every mind
respond to the sentiment that man, in regard to man, should be free and
equal; but it is the province of genius such as yours to give unity to
the universal, and find utterance for the felt.

When society has been prepared for some momentous movement or moral
reformation, so that the hidden thoughts of the people want only an
interpreter, the thinking community an organ, and suffering humanity a
champion, distinguished is the honor belonging to the individual in whom
all these requisites are found combined.

To you has been assigned by Providence the important task of educing the
latent emotions of humanity, and waking the music that slumbered in the
chords of the universal human heart, till it has pealed forth in one
deep far rolling and harmonious anthem, of which the heavenly burden is,
"Liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are
bound!"

The production of your accomplished pen, which has already called forth
such unqualified eulogy from almost every land where Anglo-Saxon
literature finds access, and created so sudden and fervent an excitement
on the momentous subject of American slavery, has nowhere been hailed
with a more cordial welcome, or produced more salutary effects, than in
the city of Aberdeen.