Lawrence.
“Scattered and insulated men, wherever the light of philanthropy and
liberty has beamed in upon your solitary spirits, come down to us like your
streams and clouds — and our own Grafton, all about among your dear
hills, and your mountain-flanked valleys — whether you home
along the swift
Ammonoosuck, the
cold Pemigewassett, or the ox-bowed Connecticut.” —
“We are slow, brethren, dishonorably slow, in a cause like ours. Our
feet should be ‘as hinds’ feet.’ ‘Liberty lies
bleeding.’ The leaden-colored wing of slavery obscures the land with
its baleful shadow. Let us come together, and inquire at the hand of the
Lord what is to be done.”
And again; on occasion of the
New England Convention in the Second-Advent
Tabernacle, in Boston, he desires to try one more blast, as it were, ‘on
Fabyan’s White Mountain horn.’
“Ho, then, people of the
Bay State
— men, women, and children; children, women, and men, scattered
friends of the friendless, wheresoever ye inhabit — if
habitations ye have, as such friends have not always — along
the sea-beat border of
Old Essex
and the
Puritan Landing,
and up beyond sight of the sea-cloud, among the inland hills, where the sun
rises and sets upon the dry land, in that vale of the Connecticut, too fair
for human content, and too fertile for virtuous industry — where
deepens the haughtiest of earth’s streams, on its seaward way, proud
with the pride of old Massachusetts. Are there any friends of the friendless
negro haunting such a valley as this? In God’s name, I fear there are
none, or few, for the very scene looks apathy and oblivion to the genius of
humanity. I blow you the summons though. Come, if any of you are there.
“And gallant little Rhode Island; transcendent abolitionists
of the tiny Commonwealth. I need not call you. You are called the
year round, and, instead of sleeping in your tents, stand harnessed, and
with trumpets in your hands — every one!
“Connecticut! yonder, the home of the Burleighs, the Monroes, and the
Hudsons, and the native land of old
George
Benson! are you ready? ‘All ready!’
“Maine here, off east, looking from my mountain post, like an
everglade. Where is your
Sam. Fessenden,
who stood storm-proof ’gainst
New Organization in
’38? Has he too much name as a jurist and orator, to be found at a New
England Convention in ’43? God forbid! Come one and all of you from
‘Down East’ to Boston, on the 30th,
and let the sails of your coasters whiten all the sea-road. Alas! there are
scarce enough of you to man a fishing boat. Come up, mighty in your fewness.
“And green Vermont, what has become of your anti-slavery host —
thick as your mountain maples — mastering your very politics —
not by balance of power, but by sturdy majority.
