I deny your proposition.
Secondly, granting your proposition to be true — and admitting what I
deny — that Jesus Christ did not preach the abolition of slavery, then
I say, “he didn’t do his duty.”
His was not the wisdom of the head, but of the heart. If perhaps he had all
the faults, he had more than the usual virtues of the radical. He loved his
native soil, her hills and streams, like a
Burns or
Scott. As he rode to an antislavery convention, he viewed the country with a
poet’s eye, and some of his letters written back to his editorial
substitute contain as true and pleasing pictures of New England life and
scenery as are anywhere to be found.
Whoever heard of Swamscot before?
“Swamscot is all fishermen. Their
business is all on the deep. Their village is ranged along the ocean margin,
where their brave little fleets lay drawn up, and which are out at day-break
on the mighty blue — where you may see them brooding at anchor —
still and intent at their profound trade, as so many flies on the
back of a wincing horse, and for whose wincings they care as little as the
Swamscot Fishers heed the restless heavings of the sea around their barks.
Every thing about savors of fish. Nets hang out on every enclosure. Flakes,
for curing the fish are attached to almost every dwelling. Every body has a
boat — and you’ll see a huge pair of sea boots lying before
almost every door. The air too savors strongly of the common finny vocation.
Beautiful little beaches slope out from the dwellings into the Bay, all along
the village — where the fishing boats lie keeled up, at low water, with
their useless anchors hooked deep into the sand. A stranded bark is a sad
sight — especially if it is above high water mark, where the next tide
can’t relieve it and set it afloat again. The Swamscot boats though,
all look cheery, and as if sure of the next sea-flow. The people are said to
be the freest in the region — owing perhaps to their bold and
adventurous life. The Priests can’t ride them out into the
deep, as they can the shore folks. ”
His style and vein though often exaggerated and affected were more native to
New England than those of any of her sons, and unfinished as his pieces were,
yet their literary merit has been overlooked.
