Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
United States -- Biography; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Biography
"The cry of hard language has become stale in my ears. The faithful
utterance of that language has, by the blessing of God, made the
anti-slavery cause what it is, ample in resources, strong in numbers,
victorious in conflict. * * * Soft phrases and honeyed accents
were tried in vain for many a year;--they had no adaptation to the
subject. 'Canst thou draw out the leviathan, Slavery, with a hook?
or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou put a
hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he
make many supplications unto thee? wilt thou take him for a servant
forever? Shall not one be cast down at the sight of him? Out of his
nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron. His breath
kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth. His heart is as
firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether mill-stone.
When he raiseth up himself, even the mighty are afraid. He esteemeth
iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.' O, the surpassing folly
of those 'wise and prudent' men, who think he may be coaxed into a
willingness to be destroyed, and who regard him as the gentlest of all
fish--provided he be let alone! They say it will irritate him to charge
him with being a leviathan; he will cause the deep to boil like a pot.
Call him a dolphin, and he will not get angry! If I should call these
sage advisers by their proper names, no doubt they would be irritated
too."
The era of mob violence, which swept over the country in consequence of
the anti-slavery agitation, led to a discussion of the peace question,
in which Garrison took an earnest part as a champion of the principles
of non-resistance, and in 1838 he led the way in organizing the New
England Non-Resistance Society, whose declaration of sentiments was
prepared by him. The active part taken by the women of the country in
these moral changes, led to a discussion of the rights of women. Mr.
Garrison was at once an advocate for the principle that women should
be allowed liberty to do whatever God and nature qualified them to
do--to vote, to serve on committees, and to take part in discussions
on equal terms with the other sex. Upon this principle there was
a division in the Anti-Slavery Society in 1840; and in the World's
Anti-Slavery Convention, held that year in London, Mr. Garrison, being
delegate from that society, refused to take his seat because the female
delegates from the United States were excluded. Probably no act of Mr.
Garrison's eventful life was a more difficult and triumphant exercise
of consistent principle than this.
He had come over to England for sympathy, for at home he was despised,
and rejected, and hated, and Exeter Hall was filled with an applauding,
tumultuous crowd, ready to make him the lion of the hour, but not ready
to receive his female coadjutors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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