William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist by Archibald H. Grimke
page 48 of 356 (13%)
page 48 of 356 (13%)
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Garrison burned and blazed as the sun that July afternoon burned and
blazed in the city's streets. None without escaped the scorching rays of the latter, none within was able to shun the fervid heat of the former. Those of my readers who have watched the effects of the summer's sun on a track of sandy land and have noted how, about midday, the heat seems to rise in sparkling particles and exhalations out of the hot, surcharged surface, can form some notion of the moral fervor and passion of this Fourth of July address, delivered more than sixty years ago, in Boston. Through all the pores of it, over all the length and breadth of it, there went up bright, burning particles from the sunlit sympathy and humanity of the young reformer. In beginning, he animadverted, among other things, on the spread of intemperance, of political corruption, on the profligacy of the press, and, amid them all, the self-complacency and boastfulness of the national spirit, as if it bore a charmed life. "But," he continued, "there is another evil which, if we had to contend against nothing else, should make us quake for the issue. It is a gangrene preying upon our vitals--an earthquake rumbling under our feet--a mine accumulating material for a national catastrophe. It should make this a day of fasting and prayer, not of boisterous merriment and idle pageantry--a day of great lamentation, not of congratulatory joy. It should spike every cannon, and haul down every banner. Our garb should be sack-cloth--our heads bowed in the dust--our supplications for the pardon and assistance of Heaven. "Sirs, I am not come to tell you that slavery is a curse, debasing in its effects, cruel in its operations, fatal in its continuance. The day and the occasion require no such revelation. I do not claim the |
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