Caucasian human nature as well--that human nature which seldom rises
above self-interest in business or politics. If you have abundance of
money, the merchant is all accommodation, the lawyer all smiles; if
you have votes that count, politicians cannot be too obsequious, too
affable, too anxious to serve you. But if you simply have common
humanity, clothed in the awful majesty of a just cause, you appeal in
vain to the cormorants of trade, the harpies of law, or the demagogues
of power. Unless you are of the salt salty, unless you are clothed in
broadcloth and fine linen, you cannot obtain even a respectful
hearing.

It took the Abolitionists full thirty years to convince the American
people, the ministry of Christ included, that slavery was, pure and
simple, a "Covenant with death and an agreement with hell;" and then,
sad to say, they were convinced against their wills. Their sense of
justice had become so obtuse as to wholly blunt the sense of reason,
the brotherly sympathy of a common race-feeling, and the broad,
liberal and just inculcations of Jesus Christ. The nation was sunk to
the moral turpitude of Constantinople; and not even a John crying in
the wilderness could arouse it to a sense of the exceeding foulness in
the midst of which it grovelled, or of the storm gathering on the
distant horizon.

Although the abolition of slavery had been agitated for more than
thirty years, the nation, which was ruled by politicians of the usual
mental caliber, was startled at the defiant shot upon Fort
Sumter--the shot that echoed the downfall of the foulest institution
which has sapped the vitality of any modern government, and that
aroused the people to a sorrowful realization that the power which
defied them was strong enough and desperate enough to stop at nothing