It is too much to expect that men thus tortured should reason calmly, that patients thus suffering should comprehend the true nature of their case and kindly acknowledge the beneficent cure; but not on this account can it be suspended.

Nor, when we consider the character of Slavery, can it be expected that men who sustain it will be tranquil.

Conscience has its voice, and will be heard in awful warning hurrying to and fro in the midnight hour.

In the face of this complaint, I assert that the Antislavery Enterprise has already accomplished incalculable good.

Even now it sweeps the national heart, compelling it to emotions of transforming power.

Mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters are aroused to take part in the great battle.

There is a new aspiration for justice on earth, awakening not merely a sentiment against Slavery, such as prevailed with our fathers, but a deep, undying conviction of its wrong, and a determination to leave no effort unattempted for its…

With the sympathies of all Christendom as allies, already it encompasses the slave-masters by a moral blockade, invisible to the eye, but more potent than navies, from which there can be no escape except in final capitulation.

Thus it has created the irresistible influence which itself constitutes the beginning of success.

In common speech, as well as in writing, among slave-masters, the bondman is no longer called slave, but servant,--thus, by soft substitution, concealing and condemning the true relation.

Newspapers, even in the land of bondage, blush at the hunt of men by bloodhounds,--thus protesting against an unquestionable incident of Slavery.

It remains to show, in the third place, that the Antislavery Enterprise, which stands before you at once necessary and practicable, is commended by inherent DIGNITY.

Its object is benevolent; nor is there in the dreary annals of the Past a single enterprise more clearly and indisputably entitled to this character.

With unsurpassed and touching magnanimity, it seeks to benefit the lowly whom your eyes have not seen, and who are ignorant even of your labors, while it demands and receives a self-sacrifice calculated to ennoble an enterprise of even…

Scholarship, literature, jurisprudence, art, may wear their well-deserved honors; but an enterprise of goodness deserves, and will yet receive, a higher palm than these.

It concerns the cause of Human Freedom, which from earliest days has been the darling of History.

Unless Freedom be an illusion, and Benevolence an error, you cannot resist the appeal.

Who can doubt that our cause is nobler even than that of our fathers? for is it not more exalted to struggle for the freedom of others than for our own?

In its presence the machinations of politicians, the aspirations of office-seekers, and the subterfuges of party, all sink below even their ordinary insignificance.

For myself, Sir, I see among us at this time little else by which an honest man, wishing to leave the world better than he found it, can be tempted out upon the exposed steeps of public life.

The hard words are manifold as the passions and prejudices of men; but they generally end in the imputation of “fanaticism.” In such a cause I am willing to be called “fanatic,” or what you will; I care not for aspersions, nor shall I…

But the same impartial History will yet re-judge the impassioned judgments of this hour.

If this be so, the more is the pity on their account; for our cause is needful to them more than they are needful to our cause.

It is not the eminent in Church and State, the rich and powerful, the favorites of fortune and of place, who most promptly welcome Truth, when she heralds change in the existing order of things.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.