Historical voices

Every measure, yet devised and executed, having for its object the suppression of anti-slavery, has been as idle and fruitless as pouring oil to extinguish fire.

As one genuine bankbill is worth more than a thousand counterfeits, so is one man, with right on his side, worth more than a thousand in the wrong.

It is the righteous of the cause—the humanity of the cause—which constitutes its potency.

His voice is the voice of a man, and his cry is the cry of a man in distress, and man must cease to be man before he can become insensible to that cry.

The slave is bound to mankind by the powerful and inextricable net-work of human brotherhood.

It is beyond the power of slavery to annihilate affinities recognized and established by the Almighty.

The growth of intelligence, the influence of commerce, steam, wind, and lightning are our allies.

England, France, and Germany, the three great lights of modern civilization, are with us, and every American traveler learns to regret the existence of slavery in his country.

In addition to authors, poets, and scholars at home, the moral sense of the civilized world is with us.

If the anti-slavery movement shall fail now, it will not be from outward opposition, but from inward decay.

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.

A thousand strong men might be struck down, and its ranks still be invincible.

Anti-slavery is no longer a thing to be prevented.

The great idea of impartial liberty is now fairly before the American people.

There is no denying, for it is everywhere admitted, that the anti-slavery question is the great moral and social question now before the American people.

Nevertheless, there is that within which ever pleads for the right and the just.

So it is, so hath it ever been, and so must it ever be, when the claims of justice and mercy make their demand at the door of human selfishness.

He knows very well whatsoever he would have done unto himself, but is quite in doubt as to having the same thing done unto others.

In his own cause he can beat a Boston lawyer, but he is dumb when asked to plead the cause of others.

He only blunders when asked to lose sight of himself.

You have only to keep out of sight the manner of applying your principles, to get them endorsed every time.

Every time the abolitionist speaks in honor of human liberty, he touches a chord in the heart of the anti-abolitionist, which responds in harmonious vibrations.

The slaveholder himself, the daily robber of his equal brother, discourses eloquently as to the excellency of justice, and the man who employs a brutal driver to flay the flesh of his negroes, is not offended when kindness and humanity are…

The manner of applying them is the point of difference.