There are southern men who are more generous than their theory, and there are northern men who are grossly untrue to the northern theory, which, with their lips, they profess.
Henry Ward Beecher
The Public Record
Henry Ward Beecher was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love, and his 1875 adultery trial. His rhetorical focus on the love of Christ has influenced mainstream Christianity through the 21st century.
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There are southern men with northern consciences, and there are northern men with southern consciences.
There is not a man so poor in the North, or so ignorant, or souseless, as not to be regarded as a Man, by religion, by civil law, and by public opinion.
If sharks in great cities consume the too credulous emigrant; if usurers, like moths, cut the fabric of life with invisible teeth; if landlords sack their tenements and pinch the tenant--all these results are against the spirit of our law…
But, in the South, the subordination of man, to man, in his earnings, his skill, his time and labor--in his person, his affections, his very children--is a part of the theory of society, drawn out into explicit statutory law, coincident…
A net spread for those guilty of such wrongs against man, would catch States, and Legislatures, Citizens, Courts, and Constitutions.
There is no other law for the Governor of New-York or of Massachusetts, than for the beggar in your streets.
That which protects the dwelling and the property of the rich man, belongs just as much to the hovel of the beggar.
God sends but one sun, and it is the same light that kindles against the roof of a mansion, that dawns upon the thatch of a hut.
The same air comes to each, the same showers, the same seasons, summer and winter.
The rich, the learned, the refined, the strong, may know how to make a better use of the air, but they have no more air of privilege to breathe, than the poorest wretch.
If he must stand by what he is, how surely must he be given over to weakness, to abuse, to oppressions.