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
Of Garrison's appearance at this time, it is sufficient to say that
it was no more nor less serene and untroubled than when he stood amid
the hisses of the mob in Faneuil Hall. He had always believed in this
victory as steadfastly in the beginning as in the end, for God, who
makes all his instruments for his own purposes, had given him in the
outset that "faith which is the substance of things hoped for, and the
evidence of things not seen," and to God alone, without a thought of
self, did he ascribe the glory.
On the 1st of January, 1865, Mr. Garrison having finished the work for
which the Liberator was established in Boston, came out with his last
editorial announcing the discontinuing of that paper. He says:
"The object for which the _Liberator_ was commenced--the extermination
of chattel slavery--having been gloriously consummated, it seems to me
specially appropriate to let its existence cover the historic period
of the great struggle; leaving what remains to be done to complete the
work of emancipation to other instrumentalities, (of which I hope to
avail myself,) under new auspices, with more abundant means and with
millions instead of hundreds for allies.
"Most happy am I to be no longer in conflict with the mass of my
fellow-countrymen on the subject of slavery. For no man of any
refinement or sensibility can be indifferent to the approbation of his
fellow-men, if it be rightly earned. But to obtain it by going with
the multitude to do evil, is self-degradation and personal dishonor.
Better to be always in a minority of one with God--branded as a madman,
incendiary, fanatic, heretic, infidel--frowned upon by the powers
that be, and mobbed by the populace--or consigned ignominiously to
the gallows, like him whose 'soul is marching on,' though his 'body
lies mouldering in the grave,' or burnt to ashes at the stake, like
Wickliffe, or nailed to the cross, like Him who 'gave himself for the
world,' in defence of the RIGHT, than like Herod, having the shouts of
the multitude crying, 'It is the voice of a god, and not of a man!'
"Commencing my editorial career when only twenty years of age, I have
followed it continuously till I have attained my sixtieth year--first
in connection with _The Free Press_, in Newburyport, in the spring of
1826; next, with _The National Philanthropist_, in Boston, in 1827;
next, with _The Journal of the Times_, in Bennington, Vt., in 1828-9;
next, with _The Genius of Universal Emancipation_, in Baltimore, in
1829-30; and finally, with the _Liberator_, in Boston, from the 1st of
January, 1831, to the 1st of January, 1866,--at the start, probably the
youngest member of the editorial fraternity in the land, now, perhaps,
the oldest, not in years, but in continuous service,--unless Mr.
Bryant, of the New York _Evening Post_, be an exception.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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