One flash from the
heart-supplied intellect of Harriet Beecher Stowe could light a
million camp fires in front of the embattled host of slavery,
which not all the waters of the Mississippi, mingled as they are
with blood, could extinguish. The present will be looked to by
after coming generations, as the age of anti-slavery literature--
when supply on the gallop could not keep pace with the ever
growing demand--when a picture of a Negro on the cover was a help
to the sale of a book--when conservative lyceums and other
American literary associations began first to select their
orators for distinguished occasions from the ranks of the
previously despised abolitionists. If the anti-slavery movement
shall fail now, it will not be from outward opposition, but from
inward decay. Its auxiliaries are everywhere. Scholars,
authors, orators, poets, and statesmen give it their aid. The
most brilliant of American poets volunteer in its service.
Whittier speaks in burning verse to more than thirty thousand, in
the National Era. Your own Longfellow whispers, in every hour of
trial and disappointment, "labor and wait.
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