Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/248

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THE ANTI-SLAVERY ENTERPRISE.
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—all these turn out anti-Slavery measures. Mr. Douglas stands in his place in the Senate, and turns his face north, and says, "We mean to subdue you." The mass at the North says, " We are not going to be subdued." It is an anti-Slavery resolution. The South repudiates Democracy: the Charleston Mercury and the Richmond Examiner. say that the Declaration of Independence is a great mistake when it says all men are by nature equal in their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,—that there is no greater lie in the world. When the North understands that, it says, "I am anti-Slavery at once." The North has not heard it yet thoroughly. One day it will.

2. Then there are the general effects of education: it enlightens men, so that they can see that Slavery is a bad speculation, bad economy.

3. Then there is the progressive moralization of the North. The North is getting better, more and more Christian and humane, it was never so temperate as today, never so just, never so moral, never so humane and philanthropic. To be sure, even now we greatly over-look our black brother: it is because he is not an Anglo-Saxon. But he has human blood in his veins: by and by we shall see our black brother also.

4. Then the better portion of the Northern press is on our side. Consider what quantities of books have been written within the last ten years full of anti-Slavery sentiment, and running over with anti-Slavery ideas. Think of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the host of books, only inferior to that, which have been published* Then look at the newspapers. I just spoke of the Evening Post, and Tribune: look at the New York Independent, with twenty thousand subscribers, with so much anti-Slavery in it. It does not go the length that I wish it did, and sometimes it does very mean things ; for it is not unitary. See what powerful anti-Slavery agents are the Evening Post, the Independent, the New York Times, and the New York Tribune, and that whole army of newspapers, some of them in every Northern city ; not to forget the National Era, at Washington. Besides these, there are the anti-Slavery newspapers proper, the Liberator, the Standard, and divers others, only second where it is praise to be inferior.

5. Then there is the anti-Slavery party proper, with its