Untitled

50
est mistake to think it was not then lamented as an
evil and a sin. But the question was how to get
rid of it The wise said : If we open the question,
the master will strain the negro s bonds tighter ; if
we persist, there will be civil war, and that is a
horror with which no one has a right to charge his
conscience.
And what is to-day the fact of history ? It has
pleased God to lead us to liberty over the dead
bodies of half a million men. Were our fathers
weak tremblers because they shrunk from giving
their children to the sword ? They could not know
that war would bring about liberty. Therefore
they deprecated agitation, when there was no good
plan for action. And in so doing they were right,
absolutely right! And the Extremists, who went
beyond patient argument and charitable thought,
were wrong.
When we were brought to the terrible pass of
civil war, the sober-minded and prudent, in fact,
the men of action, seeing the inevitable upon
them, rose in their might, and they and they
alone fought the good fight and saved the Union
and freed the slave. If any one doubts this, let
him think of the names of Grant, Meade, Sherman,
of Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Fes-
Thomas, Sheridan ;
senden, Adams, Andrew. And let him find, if he
can, the name of an Extremist who really DID any
thing notable in the struggle.
Charge D. That he broke his pledge
Female Antislavery Society ?
This, in its vagueness,
made to the
reminds one of the cele-