But the uncounted millions of anti-slavery tracts, pamphlets, journals, and addresses of the entire period of agitation were little more than a paper wad compared with the solid shot "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was to slavery. Written in vigorous English, in scintillating, perspicuous style; adorned with gorgeous imagery, bristling with living "_facts_", going to the lowest depths, mounting to the greatest altitudes, moving with panoramic grandeur, picturing humanity forlorn and outraged; giving forth the shrillest, most _despairing_ cries of the afflicted, and the sublimest strains of Christian faith; the struggle of innocent, defenceless womanhood, the subdued sorrow of chattel-babyhood, the yearnings of fettered manhood, and the piteous sobs of helpless old age,--made Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" the magnifying wonder of enlightened Christendom! It pleaded the cause of the slave in twenty different languages; it engrossed the thought of philosophers, and touched the heart of youth with a strange pity for the slave. It covered audiences with the sunlight of laughter, wrapt them in sorrow, and veiled them in tears. It illustrated the power of the Gospel of Love, the gentleness of Negro character, and the powers and possibilities of the race. It was God's message to a people who had refused to listen to his anti-slavery prophets and priests; and its sad, weird, and heart-touching descriptions and dialogues restored the milk of human kindness to a million hearts that had grown callous in an age of self-seeking and robbery of the poor. In a political and sectional sense, the "Impending Crisis," by Helper, exerted a wide influence for good. It was read by merchants and politicians. Diverse and manifold as were the methods of the friends of universal freedom, and sometimes apparently conflicting, under God no honest effort to rid the Negro and the country of the curse of slavery was lost. All these agencies, running along different lines, converged at a common centre, and aimed at a common end--the ultimate extinction of the foreign and domestic slave-trade. FOOTNOTES: [12] In the Library of the New York Historical Society there is "An Oration Upon the Moral and Political Evil of Slavery. Delivered at a Public Meeting of the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage, Baltimore, July 4, 1791. By George Buchanan, M.D., Member of the American Philosophical Society. Baltimore: Printed by Phillip Edwards, MDCCXCIII." [13] Men of our Times, pp. 162, 163. [14] Speech delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Cork Anti-Slavery Society, 1829. [15] Sumner's Works, vol. i. p. 336. [16] At the election that took place on the 9th of November, 1846, the vote stood as follows: Winthrop (Whig), 5,980; Howe (Anti-Slavery), 1,334; Homer (Democrat), 1,688; Whiton (Independent), 331. The number of tickets in the field indicated the state of public feeling.