It was not the love of fame surely which brought them over so many hundreds of miles, which made so many of them endure real physical privation, which drew all by a common, an irresistible impulse to congregate for an unpopular purpose within reach of the teeth and the claws of an enraged public opinion.
Grimké highlights the deep emotional and moral motivations that drove reformers to gather for the abolitionist cause.
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And in this moral mud there bred apace bestiality and cruelty, superstition and sensuality, tyranny and fear--the black brood of man's inhumanity to man.
He could not hold his peace; his message he was compelled to deliver in the ears of the nation whether its leaders would hear or forbear.
I have always supposed that its spirit was directly opposed to everything in the shape of fraud and oppression.
Is it any wonder that crime emerges out of such cruel and unequal conditions?