But the star of hope had not completely vanished. Massachusetts had declared back in 1780 that no man could stand upon her soil and look upon the towering monuments erected to the memory of her illustrious sons who fell in defense of liberty, and be a slave. Her example was followed by other states, until in 1830 the last northern state freed its slaves. And now a new crusade against slavery began. Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Patrick Henry and John Adams had passed away, but their mantles fell on worthy shoulders. There appeared upon the scene men whom God had raised up to create for the country a conscience that would eventually demand the overthrow of slavery. They appealed to the people and invoked their sovereignty as the greatest and most affective force in a democracy. First came Benjamin Lundy, preaching with vigor and power a gradual emancipation. Contemporaneous with him was William Lloyd Garrison, the radical, demanding nothing less than the immediate and unconditional manumission of slaves. His heroic and undaunted spirit, his earnestness and his uncompromising attitude on the subject of slavery easily made him the leading force among abolitionists. Around and about him were gathered other men imbued with the same sublime and holy sentiments. There were the eloquent Phillips, John Brown, burning with zeal, the learned Sumner, the fearless Lovejoys, our own majestic Frederick Douglass with his tongue of flame, and others equally energetic and equally in earnest. God had given to these men the fires of genius. It took the cause of human liberty to arouse them from their slumbers. Great events make great men. From 1850 to 1860 the country was all aflame with the slavery agitation. The institution itself was complete master in the halls of national legislation. It prostituted statesmen, and by the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court of the United States “clothed it with the ample garments of judicial respectability.” Three quarters of a century after the fathers of the country had met in Convention “for the purpose of forming a more perfect union,” the great evil slavery brought that union to the very verge of dissolution. The prophesy of Jefferson that slavery would be the rock on which the country would eventually split was fulfilled and the states were in the throes of a Civil War. There are evils so vast and radical that nothing short of a bloody revolution can be found sufficient to extirpate them. So the eradication of the monstrous system that held four millions of human beings in bondage—a vast property estimated in value at from twelve to fifteen hundred million dollars—was accomplished only by a terrible, devastating war—the court of last resort. From it there was no appeal.