Slavery -- United States; United States -- Politics and government -- 1849-1853
Every Young Man, however obscure or powerless he may seem, can do
something for the cause of freedom. Whatever disadvantages the youth
may labor under, they have one all-compensating advantage. A longer
period of life is before them, and deeds which can only be accomplished
through years of labor, they can achieve. But our success depends
infinitely less upon our strength than upon our motive. When we
supply the virtuous will, God supplies the power; so that the result
corresponds, not to our weakness, but to his omnipotence. We are thus
made able
----“to join
Our partial movements with the master wheel
Of the great world, _and serve that sacred end,
Which He, the unerring Reason, keeps in view_.”
Those Young Men of Massachusetts, then, of the noble lineage of the
Pilgrims, who have been nursed amid the influences of sanctuary
and school, in whose bosoms is the sacred depository of future and
boundless hopes, but who are now counselled to abandon their integrity,
who are brought into peril of being corrupted by the lures of wealth,
or fascinated by the dazzling of worldly honors, or swept away by the
pressure of the multitude that do evil, I adjure to stand fast and
immovable on those sacred and eternal principles of Human Liberty
which came down to us _through_ the fires of oppression and the agony
and blood of martyrs, but came _from_ God;--principles that can never
suffer the decays of time, which kings nor senates of kings can ever
abolish, and which, however much the passions of men may seek to taint
or defile them, are ever beautiful and fair, as the names of all their
disciples shall hereafter be. I call upon Young Men to throw themselves
forward in imagination into middle life, or old age, and there behold
how these mighty questions will look in the retrospect of time, when
the brilliant robes which now gild the tempter are gone, and only the
ghastly fiend remains; when the passion that prompted the crime is
dead, and only the remorse survives. Think not of luxury, or wealth,
or ignoble ease, but only of an heroic conflict, careless of the
present strength of the foe. Take no bribe from the hand of power, in
whatever disguise of beauty it may come, but spurn it and its author
alike. Let your future manhood realize the generous aspirations of your
youth; and, amid the seductions of the present hour, prize only the
jubilant memories you can lay up for old age. It may grieve you to
break friendships, but truth and duty are your nearest friends. It may
be painful to live amongst those who upbraid and condemn you; but be a
coward when virtue is in peril, and your own accusing conscience you
must live with forever. Study those exemplars of excellence who came
purified and resplendent out of fiery trials. It is said of Francis
the First, that when he read the valorous exploits of Gaston de Foix,
he wept tears of emulation. Rejoice, then, though marshalled in the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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