owes to him is this--that he so
ably and consistently advocated these needful opinions, that he made
himself the head and the hand of the great party that carried
these ideas into power, that put an end to all possibility of
class-government, made naturalization easy, extended the suffrage and
applied it to judicial office, opened a still wider and better education
to all, and quietly inaugurated reforms, yet incomplete, of which we
have the benefit to this day, and which, but for him, we might not have
won against the party of Strong Government, except by a difficult and
painful Revolution.

* * * * *

=_Wendell Phillips,[51] 1811-._=

From "A Lecture delivered in December, 1861."

=_172._= THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

I would have government announce to the world that we understand the
evil which has troubled our peace for seventy years, thwarting the
natural tendency of our institutions, sending ruin along our wharves
and through our workshops every ten years, poisoning the national
conscience. We know well its character. But democracy, unlike other
governments, is strong enough to let evils work out their own
death--strong enough to face them when they reveal their proportions. It
was in this sublime consciousness of strength, not of weakness, that our
fathers submitted to the well-known evil of slavery, and tolerated it
until the viper we thought we could safely tread on, at the touch of
disappointment, starts up a fiend whose stature reaches the sky. But
our cheeks do not blanch. Democracy accepts the struggle. After this
forbearance of three generations, confident that she has yet power to
execute her will, she sends her proclamation, down to the Gulf--freedom
to every man beneath the stars, and death to every institution that
disturbs our peace, or threatens the future of the republic.

[Footnote 51: A native of Massachusetts: a vigorous thinker and speaker
on the great moral and political topics of the day, and the most
eloquent of the Anti-Slavery leaders.]

* * * * *

From His "Speeches, Lectures." &c.

=_173._= CHARACTER OF TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.

Above the lust of gold, pure in private life, generous in the use of his
power, it was against such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to
General Leclerc,--the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline,--thirty
thousand of his best troops, with orders to re-introduce slavery. Among
these s