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C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874., Section Fifth: Senatorial career. (search)
r pellet; and I am too familiar with history not to know, that every movement for reform, in Church or State, every endeavor for Human Liberty or Human Rights, has been thus assailed. I do not forget with what facility and frequency hard words have been employed—how that grandest character of many generations, the precursor of our own Washington, without whose example our Republic might have failed—the great William, Prince of Orange, the founder of the Dutch Republic, the United States of Holland—I do not forget how he was publicly branded as a perjurer and a pest of society; and, not to dwell on general instances, how the enterprise for the abolition of the slave-trade was characterized on the floor of Parliament by one eminent speaker as mischievous, and by another as visionary and delusive; and how the exalted characters which it had enlisted were arraigned by still another eminent speaker—none other than that Tarleton, so conspicuous as the commander of the British horse in the
C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874., Xxx. (search)
r pellet; and I am too familiar with history not to know, that every movement for reform, in Church or State, every endeavor for Human Liberty or Human Rights, has been thus assailed. I do not forget with what facility and frequency hard words have been employed—how that grandest character of many generations, the precursor of our own Washington, without whose example our Republic might have failed—the great William, Prince of Orange, the founder of the Dutch Republic, the United States of Holland—I do not forget how he was publicly branded as a perjurer and a pest of society; and, not to dwell on general instances, how the enterprise for the abolition of the slave-trade was characterized on the floor of Parliament by one eminent speaker as mischievous, and by another as visionary and delusive; and how the exalted characters which it had enlisted were arraigned by still another eminent speaker—none other than that Tarleton, so conspicuous as the commander of the British horse in the
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, chapter 18 (search)
n; and to-day their invention returns to plague the inventors. They made the people slaves to a falsehood; and that same deluded people have turned their fetters into gags for Mr. Seward's lips. Thank God for the retribution! But the Union created commerce; disunion will kill it. The Union the mother of commerce? I doubt it. I question whether the genius and energy of the Yankee race are not the parent of commerce and the fountain of wealth, much more than the Union. That race, in Holland, first created a country, and then, standing on piles, called modern commerce into being. That race, in England, with territory just wide enough to keep its eastern and western harbors apart, monopolized, for centuries, the trade of the world, and annexed continents only as coffers wherein to garner its wealth. Who shall say that the same blood, with only New England for its anchorage, could not drag the wealth of the West into its harbors? Who shall say that the fertile lands of Virgini
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, chapter 24 (search)
Napoleon sent his army, giving to General Leclerc, the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, thirty thousand of his best troops, with orders to reintroduce slavery. Among these soldiers came all of Toussaint's old mulatto rivals and foes. Holland lent sixty ships. England promised by special message to be neutral; and you know neutrality means sneering at freedom, and sending arms to tyrants. [Loud and long-continued applause.] England promised neutrality, and the black looked out on tsts, tear up the roads with cannon, poison the wells, show the white man the hell he comes to make ;--and he was obeyed. [Applause.] When the great William of Orange saw Louis XIV. cover Holland with troops, he said, Break down the dikes, give Holland back to ocean ; and Europe said, Sublime When Alexander saw the armies of France descend upon Russia, he said, Burn Moscow, starve back the invaders ; and Europe said, Sublime!! This black saw all Europe marshalled to crush him, and gave to hi
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2, The old South meeting House (1876). (search)
s an actual, real, every-day possibility. Look back over the history of the race; where will you find a chapter that precedes us in that achievement? Greece had her republics, but they were the republics of one freeman and tel slaves; and the battle of Marathon was fought by slaves unchained from the door-posts of their masters' houses. Italy had her republics: they were the republics of wealth and skill and family, limited and aristocratic. She had not risen to a sublime faith in man. Holland had her republic, the republic of guilds and landholders, trusting the helm of State to property and education. And all these which at their best held but a million or two within their narrow limits, have gone down in the ocean of time. A hundred cars ago our fathers announced this sublime, and, as it seemed then, foolhardy declaration,--that God intended all men to be free and equal: all men, without restriction, without qualification, without limit. A hundred years have rolled away s
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2, Christianity a battle, not a dream (1869). (search)
reat force to which we owe Europe; it is the key that unlocks the government, the society, the literature of Europe. It unfolds to you the goal toward which we are all hastening; but you must not seek for it in the religious organizations. You must not seek for it in representative and organized systems which undertake to hold its essence. The Church as a mile-stone shows how far morals have travelled up to that moment. The moment it is found, it is useless. It is like the bulwarks of Holland, good when the waters are outside, but all the worse, when the waters are inside, to keep them in. The pioneer goes through the forest girdling the trees as he moves, and, five years after, these trees are dead lumber. So Christianity goes through society, dooming now this institution and now that custom as sinful. Soon they die. Look back forty years. Christianity branded slavery as sin. Wealth laughed scornfully at the fanaticism. Fashion swept haughtily past in her pride. The Stat
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2, The education of the people (1859). (search)
ke government unnecessary, so far as it is coercion. I look upon these things as I do upon the windmills one sees all over the provinces of Holland. They have shut out the ocean with dykes; past ages built up the colossal structures which save Holland from the wave. So we have built up laws, churches, universities, to keep out from our garnered Commonwealth the flood of ignorance and passion and misrule. But in morals as in Nature, the water which we press back upon the flood oozes daily tha, and every breeze that hurries across the province at night tells the Dutchman, as he listens, that his home is safer for its passage. So, while you wake or sleep, these stores and associations shall do the work for you which the winds do for Holland. As the floods of vice ooze back through your defences, they shall relieve you from the continual watching, and educate the people in spite of themselves, winning them to think, pointing them through Nature to her God, fortifying virtue by habi
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2, The scholar in a republic (1881). (search)
l, every-day possibility. Look back over the history of the race; where will you find a chapter that precedes us in that achievement? Greece had her republics, but they were the republics of a few freemen and subjects and many slaves; and the battle of Marathon was fought by slaves, unchained from the door-posts of their masters' houses. Italy had her republics: they were the republics of wealth and skill and family, limited and aristocratic. The Swiss republics were groups of cousins. Holland had her republic, a republic of guilds and landholders, trusting the helm of state to property and education. And all these, which at their best held but a million or two within their narrow limits, have gone down in the ocean of time. A hundred years ago our fathers announced this sublime, and, as it seemed then, foolhardy declaration,that God intended all men to be free and equal: all men, without restriction, without qualification, without limit. A hundred years have rolled away si
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2, Daniel O'Connell (1875.) (search)
litionists. Webster and Clay and the staff of Whig statesmen told the people that the truth floated farther on the shouts of the mob than the most eloquent lips could carry it. But law-abiding, Protestant, educated America could not be held back. Neither Whig chiefs nor respectable journals could keep these people quiet. Go to England. When the Reform Bill of 1831 was thrown out from the House of Lords, the people were tumultuous; and Melbourne and Grey, Russell and Brougham, Lansdowne, Holland, and Macaulay, the Whig chiefs, cried out, Don't violate the law: you help the Tories! Riots put back the bill. But quiet, sober John Bull, law-abiding, could not do without it. Birmingham was three days in the hands of a mob; castles were burned; Wellington ordered the Scotch Greys to rough-grind their swords as at Waterloo. This was the Whig aristocracy of England. O'Connell had neither office nor title. Behind him were three million people steeped in utter wretchedness, sore with t
Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: the story of his life, V: the call to preach (search)
ound views. . . . Nothing keeps a man so fresh as abolitionism and kindred propensities, I observe. In a December letter he continues:— I wrote an elaborate essay on the true use of the Scriptures—against attributing (practically) literal infallibility to any part of them, or setting them up as absolute Master of Reason and Conscience; this excited interest and we brought it up at the Friday evening debate where it was discussed for four evenings with animation; one evening Elder Holland a Christian minister from Buffalo was present and spoke. . . . He is considered one of the ablest men in the body, reads Emerson, etc. After the debate he inquired with some anxiety whether that young man (meaning me) ever expected to find a pulpit to preach in? . . . I look forward to preaching with great interest, it will be a serious work to me if I do it. But I have several doubts as to practical success —whether my view of Christ as in the highest sense a natural character, divine as b<
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