William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist by Archibald H. Grimke
page 44 of 356 (12%)
page 44 of 356 (12%)
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nothing but death shall prevent us from denouncing a crime which has no
parallel in human depravity; we shall take high ground. _The alarm must be perpetual._" A voice of remonstrance, with thunder growl accompaniment, was rising higher and clearer from the pen of the young editor. His tone of earnestness was deepening to the stern bass of the moral reformer, and the storm breath of enthusiasm was blowing to a blaze the glowing coals of his humanity. The wail of the fleeing fugitive from the house of bondage sounded no longer far away and unreal in his ears, but thrilled now right under the windows of his soul. The masonic excitement and the commotion created by the abduction of Morgan he caught up and shook before the eyes of his countrymen as an object lesson of the million-times greater wrong daily done the slaves. "All this fearful commotion," he pealed, "has arisen from the abduction of _one man_. More than two millions of unhappy beings are groaning out their lives in bondage, and scarcely a pulse quickens, or a heart leaps, or a tongue pleads in their behalf. 'Tis a trifling affair, which concerns nobody. Oh! for the spirit that rages, to break every fetter of oppression!" Such a spirit was fast taking possession of the writer. Of this Lundy was well informed. He had not lost sight of his young coadjutor, but had watched his course with great hope and growing confidence. In him he found what he had discovered in no one else, anti-slavery activity and perseverance. He had often found men who protested loudly their benevolence for the negro, but who made not the slightest exertion afterward to carry out their good wishes. "They will pen a paragraph, perhaps an article, or so--and then--_the subject is exhausted!_" It was not so with his young friend, the Bennington editor. He saw that "argument and useful exertion on the subject of African emancipation can never be exhausted until the system of slavery itself be totally annihilated." He was faithful among the faithless found by |
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