public and private, and put forth every energy to rouse the people to earnest, persistent action against slavery, the deadly foe of all our cherished institutions.
We proposed to ourselves in the first moments of enthusiasm to secure, at least, a million signatures—one thirtieth part of our entire population. We thought the troubled warnings of a century—the insidious aggressions of slavery, with its violations of the sacred rights of habeas corpus, free speech, and free press, with its riots in our cities, and in the councils of the nation striking down, alike, black men and brave Senators, all culminating, at last, in the horrid tragedies of war—must have roused the dullest moral sense, and prepared the nation's heart to do justice and love mercy. But we were mistaken. Sunk in luxury, corruption, and crime—born and bred into the "guilty phantasy that man could hold property in man," we needed the clash of arms, the cannon's roar, the shrieks and groans of fallen heroes, the lamentations of mothers for their first-born, the angel's trump, the voices of the mighty dead, to wake this stolid nation from its sleep of death.
In circulating our petition many refused to sign because they believed slavery a divine institution, and therefore did not wish to change the status of the slave. Others, who professed to hate slavery, denied the right of Congress to interfere with it in the States; and yet others condemned all dictation, or even suggestion to Congress or the President. They said, "Let the people be still and trust the affairs of State to the management of the rulers they, themselves, have chosen." And many of our "old Abolitionists," believing their work done, that the war had killed slavery, knocked the bottom out of the tub, not only declared our work one of supererogation, but told us that petitioning, as a means of educating the people or influencing Congress, had become obsolete.
Under all these discouragements, with neither press nor pulpit to magnify our work, without money or the enthusiasm of numbers, in simple faith, into the highways and hedges we sent the Gospel of Freedom, and as of old, the people heard with gladness. A very large majority of our petitioners are from the unlettered masses. They who, knowing naught of the machinery of government or the trickery of politics, believe that, as God reigns, there is justice on the earth. As yet, none of our large cities have been thoroughly canvassed; but from the savannahs of the South and the prairies of the West—from the hills of New England and the shores of our lakes and gulfs, have we enrolled the soldiers of freedom in; they who, when the rebels shall lay down their arms, with higher, holier weapons must end the war. Through us, two hundred thousand[1] people—the labor and virtue of the Republic—have spoken in our national Capitol, where their voices were never heard before.
Those unaccustomed to balance influences, who judge of the importance of movements by their apparent results, may deem our efforts lust, because the Amendment and Emancipation bills have not yet passed the House; but we feel that our labors for the past year, in the circulation
- ↑ The exact number of signatures, as ascertained by Senator Sumner's clerk was 265,314.
