Henry Ward Beecher: “Let us give sap to the tree of Liberty, that it may not wither and die!”

Whatever may have been the evils, the agitation has only come through men, not from them.

It is the only basis on which the poor, the ignorant, the weak, the laboring masses can entrench against oppression.

But the North will be an utterly dead force in the American nation.

I am quite aware that the subject of Slavery has been regarded, by many, as sectional; and the agitation of it in the North needless, and injurious to our peace and the country's welfare.