The weakness and
poverty of the recent slave was pitted alone and unaided against the
wealth and power and knowledge of the master. It was a revelation
of her own thought to herself, and she was stunned and crushed by
it.
She was no statesman, and did not comprehend anything of those
grand policies whose requirements over-balance all considerations
of individual right--in comparison with which races and nations
are but sands upon the shore of Time. She little realized how grand
a necessity lay at the back of that movement which seemed to her
so heartless and inexcusable. She knew, of course, vaguely and
weakly, that the Fathers made a Constitution on which our government
was based. She did not quite understand its nature, which was very
strange, since she had often heard it expounded, and as a matter
of duty had read with care several of those books which tell us
all about it.
She had heard it called by various names in her far New England
home by men whom she loved and venerated, and whose wisdom and
patriotism she could not doubt. They had called it "a matchless
inspiration" and "a mass of compromises;" "the charter of liberty"
and "a league with Hell;" "the tocsin of liberty" and "the manacle
of the slave." She felt quite sure that nobler-minded, braver-hearted
men than those who used these words had never lived, yet she could
not understand the thing of which they spoke so positively and so
passionately.
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