The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty YearsHarper, Ida Husted
History
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years
Harper, Ida Husted
Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
On this great tour Miss Anthony became so thoroughly aroused that she
could no longer confine herself to written addresses, which seemed cold
and formal and utterly unresponsive to the inspiration of the moment.
She threw them aside and used them thereafter only on rare occasions.
Her speeches from that time were made from notes or headings and among
those used during the winter of 1857 are the following:
Object of meeting; to consider the fact of 4,000,000 slaves in a
Christian and republican government.... Everybody is anti-slavery,
ministers and brethren. There are sympathy, talk, prayers and
resolutions in ecclesiastical and political assemblies. Emerson
says "Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be
executed;" so anti-slavery prayers, resolutions and speeches avail
nothing without action.... Our mission is to deepen sympathy and
convert it into right action; to show that the men and women of the
North are slave-holders, those of the South slave-owners. The guilt
rests on the North equally with the South, therefore our work is to
rouse the sleeping consciences of the North.... No one is ignorant
now. You recognize the facts which we present. We ask you to feel
as if you, yourselves, were the slaves. The politician talks of
slavery as he does of United States banks, tariff or any other
commercial question. We demand the abolition of slavery because the
slave is a human being, and because man should not hold property in
his fellowman. The politician demands it because its existence
produces poverty and discord in the nation and imposes taxes on
free labor for its support, since the government is dominated by
southern rule.... We preach revolution; the politicians reform. We
say disobey every unjust law; the politician says obey them, and
meanwhile labor constitutionally for repeal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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