go the _many_ thought all was well in the land of the
free and the home of the brave; but _we_ knew the war was raging
then through all the Southern States. We knew the secrets of that
bastile of horrors; we heard, afar off, the shrieks and groans of
the dying, the lamentations of husbands and wives, parents and
children, sundered forever from each other. _Then_ we fed, and
clothed, and sheltered the fugitives in their weary marches where
the North Star led, and crowned with immortal wreaths the panting
heroes, pursued by the bloodhounds from the everglades of
Florida, who asked but to die in freedom under the shadow of a
monarch's throne.

Yes, the rebellion has been raging near a century on every cotton
field and rice plantation. Every vice, hardship, and abomination,
suffered by our soldiers in the war, has been the daily life in
slavery. Yet no Northern volunteers marched to the black man's
help, though he stood alone against such fearful odds, until John
Brown and his twenty-three men threw themselves into the deadly
breach. What a sublime spectacle! Behold! the black man,
forgetting all our crimes, all his wrongs for generations, now
nobly takes up arms in our defence. Look not to Greece or Rome
for heroes--to Jerusalem or Mecca for saints--but for the highest
virtues of heroism, let us worship the black man at our feet.
Mothers, redeem the past by teaching your children the limits of
human rights, with the same exactness that you now teach the
multiplication table. That "all men are created equal" is a far
more important fact for a child to understand, than that twice
two makes four.

Had we during the past century as fondly guarded the tree of
liberty, with its blessed fruits of equality, as have Southern
mothers the deadly upas of slavery, the blood of our sires and
sons, mingled with the sweat and tears of slaves, would not now
enrich the tyrant's soil, our hearthstones would not all be
desolate, nor we, with shame, behold our Northern statesmen in
the nation's councils overwhelmed with doubt and perplexity on
the simplest question of human rights. A mariner without chart or
compass, ignorant of the starry world above his head, drifting on
a troubled sea, is not more hopeless than a nation, in the throes
of revolution, without