Since so it must
be, thanks be to God that this mighty cry, this wail of an unutterable
anguish, has at last been heard!
It has been said, and not in utter despair but in solemn hope and
assurance may we regard the struggle that now convulses America,--the
outcry of the demon of slavery, which has heard the voice of Jesus of
Nazareth, and is rending and convulsing the noble nation from which at
last it must depart.
It cannot be that so monstrous a solecism can long exist in the bosom
of a nation which in all respects is the best exponent of the great
principle of universal brotherhood. In America the Frenchman, the
German, the Italian, the Swede, and the Irish all mingle on terms of
equal right; all nations there display their characteristic
excellences and are admitted by her liberal laws to equal privileges:
everything is tending to liberalize, humanize, and elevate, and for
that very reason it is that the contest with slavery there grows every
year more terrible.
The stream of human progress, widening, deepening, strengthening from
the confluent forces of all nations, meets this barrier, behind which
is concentrated all the ignorance, cruelty, and oppression of the dark
ages, and it roars and foams and shakes the barrier, and anon it must
bear it down.
In its commencement slavery overspread every State in the Union: the
progress of society has now emancipated the North from its yoke.
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