abolitionists

"Oppression and war will be heard of no more, Nor the blood of a slave leave his print on our shore, Conventions will then be a useless expense, For we'll all go free-suffrage a hundred years hence."

"One hundred years hence, what a change will be made, In politics, morals, religion and trade, In statesmen who wrangle or ride on the fence, These things will be altered a hundred years hence."

"Our laws then will be uncompulsory rules, Our prisons converted to national schools."

"When will the Americans learn, that if they would encourage liberty in other countries, they must practice it at home?"

"As your country grows in years, you must also cause it to grow in science, literature, arts and refinement. It will be for you to develope and multiply its resources, to check the faults of manners as they rise, and to advance the cause of industry, temperance, moderation, justice, morals and religion, all around you. On you too, will devolve the duty which has been too long neglected, but which cannot with impunity be neglected much longer, of providing for the mitigation, and (is it too much to hope for in North-Carolina?) for the ultimate extirpation of the worst evil that afflicts the Southern part of our Confederacy. Full well do you know to what I refer, for on this subject there is, with all of us, a morbid sensitiveness which gives warning even of an approach to it. Disguise the truth as we may, and throw the blame where we will, it is Slavery which, more than any other cause, keeps us back in the career of improvement. It stifles industry and represses enterprize—it is fatal to economy and providence—it discourages skill—impairs our strength as a community, and poisons morals at the fountain head. How this evil is to be encountered, how subdued, is indeed a difficult and delicate enquiry, which this is not the time to examine, nor the occasion to discuss. I felt, however, that I could not discharge my duty, without referring to this subject, as one which ought to engage the prudence moderation and firmness of those who, sooner or later, must act decisively upon it."

"Carolina! Carolina! Heaven's blessings attend her! While we live, we will cherish and love and defend her; Though the scorner may sneer at, and witlings defame her, Our hearts swell with gladness, whenever we name her. Hurrah! Hurrah! The Old North State for ever! Hurrah! Hurrah! the good Old North State! Though she envies not others their merited glory, Say, whose name stands the foremost in Liberty’s story? Though too true to herself, e’er to crouch to oppression, Who can yield to just rule more loyal submission? Hurrah, &c. Plain and artless her sons, but whose doors open faster, At the knock of the stranger, or the tale of disaster? How like to the rudeness of their dear native mountains, With rich ore in their bosoms, and life in their fountains? Hurrah, &c. And her daughters, the Queen of the forest resembling, So graceful, so constant, yet to gentlest breath trembling, And true light wood at heart, let the match be applied them, How they kindle and flame? Oh, none know but who’ve tried them. Hurrah, &c. Then let all who love us, love the land that we live in, (As happy a region as on this side of Heaven,) Where Plenty and Freedom, Love and Peace smile before us, Raise aloud, raise together, the heart-thrilling chorus! Hurrah, &c."

"During our march the simoom was fearful, and the heat so intense that it was impossible to draw the guncases out of their leather covers, which it was necessary to cut open. All woodwork was warped; ivory knife-handles were split; paper broke when crunched in the hand, and the very marrow seemed to be dried out of the bones. The extreme dryness of the air induced an extraordinary amount of electricity in the hair and in all woollen materials. A Scotch plaid laid upon a blanket for a few hours adhered to it, and upon being withdrawn at night a sheet of flame was produced, accompanied by tolerably loud reports."

"If any should say that they do not deny the doctrine of spiritual gifts as a Bible theory, but do not believe that the manifestations we now have are genuine, then this objection of the Bible and the Bible alone, is abandoned as opposed to the visions, and objections against them must be based on other grounds. Inasmuch as the Bible expressly provides for visions, no objections can be raised against any visions on the ground of the Bible and the Bible alone. It is all a fallacy. The only ground upon which any of them can be rejected, is to bring them to the word, the test, and show that their characteristics are not such as were to attend the genuine manifestations. And of this test we invite an application to the visions received among Seventh-day Adventists."

"The great question which should determine the essential truth of any religion is the practical one, — What can it do for man? Does it provide for his weakness? does it meet his needs? does it educate and satisfy his spiritual nature? If it does all these perfectly, it must have been made for man, and it must be true, unless God is a deceiver, and the soul itself an organized cheat."

"[The] ark was to be the central sanctity in the ritual worship of the Hebrews, during their wanderings in the wilderness. You may ask, "What have we to do to-day with that structure designed for barbarous fugitives in the Arabian desert three thousand years ago? Why lead us back from the fresh light of this morning to the misty dawn of history for a theme of meditation?" We have this to do with it, — that your new pulpit is in the direct line of descent from the first mercy-seat that consecrated the Jewish tent near Horeb. Those ten commandments, which are at the basis of our modern religion, were folded up and deposited beneath the lids of the ark in the first tabernacle that was built after the revelation from Sinai, more than thirty centuries ago. The Jews are our religious grandfathers... The first Christian churches were modelled after the synagogues; still keeping their reading-desks for the Old Testament, and adding the manuscript biographies of Jesus and the fresh letters of the apostles. When the Roman Catholic form was perfected, the simple reading-desk was supplanted by the more stately and imposing altar for the celebration of the mass. But the Protestant Reformation, appealing more directly to the reason and conscience, made the pulpit most prominent in the furniture of the church, and restored the Old and New Testaments as the basis of instruction and the sole authority. Thus this pulpit, in a young Protestant church in Boston, is connected by subtle historic ties, that reach across the ocean from the New World to the Old."

"It is of the very essence of true patriotism to be earnest and truthful, to scorn the flatterer’s tongue, and strive to keep its native land in harmony with the laws of national thrift and power. It will tell a land of its faults, as a friend will counsel a companion; it will speak as honestly as the physician advises a patient; and if occasion requires, an indignation will flame out of its love, like that which burst from the lips of Moses when he returned from the mountain, and found the people to whom he had revealed the holy and austere Jehovah, and for whom he would cheerfully have sacrificed his life, worshipping a calf."

"We could not keep in mind that it was celestial fire we were looking at, — fire cool as the water-drops out of which it was born, and on which it reclined. It lay apparently upon the trees, diffused itself among them, from the valley to the crown of the ridge, as gently as the glory in the bush upon Horeb, when "the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.""

"A serpent threaded through the shell of a turtle."

"There are a great many poor people who are very sick, and yet have no money to buy food, or clothes, or physic; and there are many more so ignorant that they never heard of the Bible, and think they do very right, when they roast and eat their enemies!"

"The longer I live the more certain I am that the great difference between men, the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy and invincible determination – a purpose once fixed and then death or victory. That quality will do anything that can be done in this world, and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged creature a man without it."

"I shall speak as well as I can for usefulness, but not for fame."

"No man has a surplus of power: meaning by power— time, talents, money, influence."

"I should very much like to be a country gentleman. I would not have the best horses, or dogs, or farms, in the county; but I would exert myself to improve the people who were under my influence."

"No longer from Parliament with an easy mind, so we must be satisfied."

"I am no politician."

"In this world I shall never be anything but a mere moderate– behind the foremost, and before the last."

"How wonderful are the ways of the Lord (God); how sweet his mercies, how terrible his judgements!"

"Slaveholders, the world over, have sung the praises of their tender mercies towards their slaves. Even the wretches that plied the African slave trade, tried to rebut Clarkson's proofs of their cruelties, by speeches, affidavits, and published pamphlets, setting forth the accommodations of the "middle passage," and their kind attentions to the comfort of those whom they had stolen from their homes, and kept stowed away under hatches, during a voyage of four thousand miles."

"The guilty, according to their own showing, are always innocent, and cowards brave, and drunkards sober, and harlots chaste, and pickpockets honest to a fault."

"We will prove that the slaves in the United States are treated with barbarous inhumanity; that they are overworked, underfed, wretchedly clad and lodged, and have insufficient sleep; that they are often made to wear round their necks iron collars armed with prongs, to drag heavy chains and weights at their feet while working in the field, and to wear yokes, and bells, and iron horns; that they are often kept confined in the stocks day and night for weeks together, made to wear gags in their mouths for hours or days, have some of their front teeth torn out or broken off, that they may be easily detected when they run away; that they are frequently flogged with terrible severity, have red pepper rubbed into their lacerated flesh, and hot brine, spirits of turpentine, &c., poured over the gashes to increase the torture; that they are often stripped naked, their backs and limbs cut with knives, bruised and mangled by scores and hundreds of blows with the paddle, and terribly torn by the claws of cats, drawn over them by their tormentors; that they are often hunted with blood hounds and shot down like beasts, or torn in pieces by dogs; that they are often suspended by the arms and whipped and beaten till they faint, and when revived by restoratives, beaten again till they faint, and sometimes till they die; that their ears are often cut off, their eyes knocked out, their bones broken, their flesh branded with red hot irons; that they are maimed, mutilated and burned to death over slow fires. All these things, and more, and worse, we shall prove. Reader, we know whereof we affirm, we have weighed it well; more and worse WE WILL PROVE."

"James G. Birney met Theodore Weld as early as 1832, in Huntsville, Alabama, where he had been living, and was deeply influenced by him."

"Despots always insist that they are merciful."

"The man who robs you every day, is, forsooth, quite too tenderhearted ever to cuff or kick you! True, he can snatch your money, but he does it gently lest he should hurt you. He can empty your pockets without qualms, but if your stomach is empty, it cuts him to the quick. He can make you work a life time without pay, but loves you too well to let you go hungry. He fleeces you of your rights with a relish, but is shocked if you work bareheaded in summer, or in winter without warm stockings. He can make you go without your liberty, but never without a shirt. He can crush, in you, all hope of bettering your condition, by vowing that you shall die his slave, but though he can coolly torture your feelings, he is too compassionate to lacerate your back-he can break your heart, but he is very tender of your skin. He can strip you of all protection and thus expose you to all outrages, but if you are exposed to the weather, half clad and half sheltered, how yearn his tender bowels! What! Slaveholders talk of treating men well, and yet not only rob them of all they get, and as fast as they get it, but rob them of themselves, also; their very hands and feet, all their muscles, and limbs, and senses, their bodies and minds, their time and liberty and earnings, their free speech and rights of conscience, their right to acquire knowledge, and property, and reputation; and yet they, who plunder them of all these, would fain make us believe that their soft hearts ooze out so lovingly toward their slaves that they always keep them well housed and well clad, never push them too hard in the field, never make their dear backs smart, nor let their dear stomachs get empty. But there is no end to these absurdities. Are slaveholders dunces, or do they take all the rest of the world to be, that they think to bandage our eyes with such thin gauzes?"

"Reader, your are empannelled as a juror to try a plain case and bring in an honest verdict. The question at issue is not one of law, but of fact-"What is the actual condition of the slaves in the United States?" A plainer case never went to a jury. Look at it. TWENTY-SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND PERSONS in this country, men, women, and children, are in SLAVERY. Is slavery, as a condition for human beings, good, bad, or indifferent?"

"The case of Human Rights against Slavery has been adjudicated in the court of conscience times innumerable. The same verdict has always been rendered-"Guilty"; the same sentence has always been pronounced, "Let it be accursed"; and human nature, with her million echoes, has rung it round the world in every language under heaven, "Let it be accursed. Let it be accursed." His heart is false to human nature, who will not say "Amen." There is not a man on earth who does not believe that slavery is a curse. Human beings may be inconsistent, but human nature is true to herself. She has uttered her testimony against slavery with a shrick ever since the monster was begotten; and till it perishes amidst the execrations of the universe, she will traverse the world on its track, dealing her bolts upon its head, and dashing against it her condemning brand. We repeat it, every man knows that slavery is a curse. Whoever denies this, his lips libel his heart. Try him; clank the chains in his ears, and tell him they are for him; give him an hour to prepare his wife and children for a life of slavery; bid him make haste and get ready their necks for the yoke, and their wrists for the coffle chains, then look at his pale lips and trembling knees, and you have nature's testimony against slavery. Two millions seven hundred thousand persons in these States are in this condition. They were made slaves and are held such by force, and by being put in fear, and this for no crime!"

"the prophecies of evil always inspired by a growing reform"

"humanity has moved forward to an era where wrong and slavery are being displaced, and reason and justice are being recognized as the rule of life. Science is extending immeasurably the bounds of knowledge and power; art is refining life, giving to it beauty and grace; literature bears in her hands whole ages of comfort and sympathy, industry, aided by the hundred-handed elements of nature, is increasing the world’s wealth, and invention is economizing its labor. The ages looks steadily to the redressing of wrong, to the righting of every form of error and injustice; and the tireless and prying philanthropy, which is almost omniscient, is one of the most hopeful characteristics of the time. It could not be possible in such an era, but that women should share in the justice and kindliness with which the time is fraught. A great wave is lifting them to higher levels. The leadership of the world is being taken from the hands of the brutal and low, and the race is making its way to a higher ideal than once it knew."

"“What shall we do with our daughters?” is really the sum and substance of what, I popular phase, is called “the woman question.”"

"It is more than fifty years since Margaret Fuller, standing, as she said, “in the sunny noon of life,” wrote a little book, which she launched on the current of thought and society. It was entitled “Women in the Nineteenth Century”; and as the truths it proclaimed and the reforms it advocated were far in advance of public acceptance, its appearance was the signal for an immediate widespread newspaper controversy, that raged with great violence. I was young then, and as I took the book from the hands of the bookseller, wondering what the contents of the thin little volume could be, to provoke so wordy a strife, I opened the first page. My attention was immediately arrested, and a train of thought started"

"Above all, at the present time, should women cultivate what they grievously lack, a fine esprit de corps. They should stand together in a solidarity that can not be shaken by difference of opinion, nor weakened by jealousy, nor undermined by the cruel gossip and scandal of the world. “Any stone is good enough to throw at a dog,” says Frances Power Cobbe, ” and there is yet a spirit in the world that regards any slur, innuendo, or hint of baseness as legitimate if uttered concerning a woman.” “the woman Thou gavest me, she gave me of the tre and I did eat,” is still the pitiful plea of the shirk and the coward. It should not be echoed by women, nor exalted by them to the dignity of an accusation. I lack language in which to express my sense of reprobation of the course pursued by those women who, from their soft and easy homes, where they are anchored in the love of manly husbands, enter the arena of public life only to beat back their sisters who seek larger opportunities than suffice for themselves; who make their own opinions and wishes the measure of all women’s needs, and cry out to legislatures and courts, parliaments and congresses: “Hold, enough! Concede to women no more of their demands, for we have all the rights we want!” “Whenever a wrong is done To the humblest and the weakest ‘neath the all-beholding sun, That wrong is also done to us, and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all the race.”"

"that grander type of woman, towards which to-day the whole sex is moving, —consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, — because the current sets that way, and there is no escape from it."

"Obedience to the behests of duty gives peace, even when love is lacking; and peace is a diviner thing than happiness."

"Only a little over a quarter of a century ago women were allowed to enter very few remunerative occupations. In 1840, when Harriet Martineau visited this country to study its institutions, that she might be able to forecast the type of civilization to be evolved from them, she especially investigated the position of women in the young republic. She was surprised to find the occupying a very subordinate position in a country calling itself free, and to find they had entered only seven paying occupations. They were allowed to teach, to be seamstresses, which included tailoring, dress-making, and millinery; they could keep boarding-houses, enter domestic service, become operatives in factories, compositors in printing offices, and folders and stitchers in book binderies."

"the last statue of w:Anne Whitney, unveiled a few months ago, the ideal statue of the Norseman Leif, the son of Eric, is regarded by man competent critics as the most exquisite work of art that has come from the studio of any American sculptor."

"The ancient commercial dimensions of the earth are swept away forever, and competition is now world-wide. This will compel the thorough training of American working people in industrial education, based on art and science. We need technical schools as we find them in the Old World, abundant and open alike to old and young, rich and poor, and as free to women as to men."

"Clara Barton, doing clerical work in a department of the Government and declining to receive compensation therefor, attracted no attention. But Clara Barton in hospitals an don hospital transports, bringing order out of chaos, hope our of despair, and holding death in abeyance; Clara Barton at Andersonville, where 13,000 soldiers had yielded up life under the prolonged horrors of a military prison, and had been ignominiously buried in long trenches, uncared for, united and unknown, attracted the attention and aroused the gratitude of the nation. For she ordered the trenches opened, the unknown dead exhumed and decently buried, each man in a separate grave, with a headstone recording his name, his rank, and the date of his death."

"to working women, as indeed to all women, the ballot is a necessity. It is the only synonym of legal equity that a republican government can know."

"Nature has so constituted us that the sexes act and react upon each other, making every “woman’s cause” a man’s cause, and every man’s cause a woman’s cause"

"Every boy should have a special fitting for some aim in life. ..Industry is a great means of grace."

"In short, the training of our boys should be toward manliness, — towards gentle-manliness; so that they will be tender to children, courteous to women, helpful to the unable, and quick to recognize those in need of assistance. They should be so strong morally as quickly to repel temptation; so trained in the habit of doing right that it will not be easy for them to do wrong."

"Our social structure has been based on the theory that “all men support all women,” a theory which has never been true, and which is farther from being true to-day than ever before."

"The old-time theory that “all men support all women” led to the enactment of laws which gave all the earnings of the married woman to her husband; in most instances gave him control of her property, always legal possession of her person, and legal ownership of her minor children; the righto decide the location of their joint domicile; the power, in short, the become the arbiter of her fate;"

"Anna Dickinson, in the Philadelphia Mint, working for a pittance and making impassioned speeches on various occasions for the enslaved black man, was regarded as a nuisance. But Anna Dickinson on the platform, with impassioned speech and fervid moral earnestness, pleading the cause of the slave and receiving $100 and $200 a night for the service; Anna Dickinson in the Connecticut and New Hampshire Republican campaigns, thrilling both States with her eloquent utterances, the acknowledged power that won the victory in both for the Republican party, became the heroine of the hour, and was hailed as the Joan d’Are of the nineteenth century."

"When the early Woman Suffragists took their stand for a redress of the wrongs of women, they used no vague or ambiguous language. As early as 1838 Angelina Grimké and Abby Kelley, who were the first women orators I ever heard, uttered their protest against the wrongs of woman, from an anti-slavery platform. They severely denounced the custom of society which closed the doors of remunerative industries against women, and thereby condemned large numbers to abject dependence and compulsory poverty. Ten years later, when the first Convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, and occasion commemorated by this weeks’ International Conference, women reiterated the protest and the denunciation, and demanded political equality as a remedy for these wrongs. Two years later another Woman’s Convention was held in Worcester, Mass., and again there rang out the demand for equal political rights for men and women, equal educational opportunities, and “partnership in the labors and gains, risks and remunerations, of productive industry.” It is impossible to-day to describe the fierce outburst of ridicule with which the public received these demands. Press and pulpit, legislatures and courts, public men and private citizens, society and fashion, all hastened to wash their hands of these innovators, and to label them with the opprobrious epithets so lavishly affixed to those who inaugurate a reform."

""How does it feel to be known as the husband of Mary Livermore?" was the snide question asked by a reporter of the Rev. Mr. Livermore, whose wife, a famous and popular writer, reformer and lecturer, often helped fill his pulpit and co-edited a periodical with him. Mr. Livermore responded with a charming smile: "Why, I'm very proud of it. You see, I'm the only man in the world who has that distinction." His reply is as notable for its good spirit as for its rarity."