Everybody will join us in denouncing slavery, in the abstract; not a
faithless priest nor politician will oppose us; abandon action, and
forsooth we can have an abolition millennium; the wolf shall lie down
with the lamb, while slavery in practice clanks, in derision, its three
millions of unbroken chains. Our opponents have no fear of the harmless
spectre of an abstract idea. They dread it only when it puts on the
flesh and sinews of a practical reality, and lifts its right arm in the
strength which God giveth to do as well as theorize.
As honest men, then, we must needs act; let us do so as becomes men
engaged in a great and solemn cause. Not by processions and idle parades
and spasmodic enthusiasms, by shallow tricks and shows and artifices, can
a cause like ours be carried onward. Leave these to parties contending
for office, as the "spoils of victory." We need no disguises, nor false
pretences, nor subterfuges; enough for us to present before our fellow-
countrymen the holy truths of freedom, in their unadorned and native
beauty. Dark as the present may seem, let us remember with hearty
confidence that truth and right are destined to triumph.
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