Yet he did not attribute his success, foolishly, to "his star,"
or to any magic. He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly
superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners
confessed, because they lacked a cause,--a kind of armor which he
and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found
willing to lay down their lives in defence of what they knew to
be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in
this world.
But to make haste to his last act, and its effects.
The newspapers seem to ignore, or perhaps are really ignorant of the
fact, that there are at least as many as two or three individuals
to a town throughout the North who think much as the present speaker
does about him and his enterprise. I do not hesitate to say that
they are an important and growing party. We aspire to be something
more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and
our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe
in. Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen
white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise;
but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves
that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They
are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which
they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free
inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had
succeeded.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29