Slavery in Massachusetts
by Henry David Thoreau
Address delivered at an Anti-Slavery Celebration,
at Framingham, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1854, after the conviction in
Boston of fugitive slave Anthony
Burns
"It was the North, not the South, that he attacked ... he spoke to a
Massachusetts that had denied to its citizens the legal right to preserve
their own moral integrity ..." - Henry Seidel Canby, Thoreau
".... his remarks have a racy piquancy and telling point which
none but a man thoroughly in earnest and regardless of self in his fidelity
to a deep conviction ever fully attains. The humor here so signally evinced
is born of pathos -- it is the lightning which reveals to hearers and readers
the speaker's profound abhorrence of the sacrifice or subordination of
one human being to the pleasure or convenience of another." - Horace Greeley,
New York Tribune editorial, August 2, 1854
I lately attended a meeting of the
citizens of Concord, expecting, as one among many, to speak on the subject
of slavery in Massachusetts; but I was surprised and disappointed to find
that what had called my townsmen together was the destiny of Nebraska,
and not of Massachusetts, and that what I had to say would be entirely
out of order. I had thought that the house was on fire, and not the prairie;
but though several of the citizens of Massachusetts are now in prison for
attempting to rescue a slave from her own clutches, not one of the speakers
at that meeting expressed regret for it, not one even referred to it. It
was only the disposition of some wild lands a thousand miles off which
appeared to concern them. The inhabitants of Concord are not prepared to
stand by one of their own bridges, but talk only of taking up a position
on the highlands beyond the Yellowstone River. Our Buttricks and Davises
and Hosmers are retreating thither, and I fear that they will leave no
Lexington Common between them and the enemy. There is not one slave in
Nebraska; there are perhaps a million slaves in Massachusetts.
They who have been bred in the school of politics
fail now and always to face the facts. Their measures are half measures
and makeshifts merely. They put off the day of settlement indefinitely,
and meanwhile the debt accumulates. Though the Fugitive Slave Law had not
been the subject of discussion on that occasion, it was at length faintly
resolved by my townsmen, at an adjourned meeting, as I learn, that the
compromise compact of 1820 having been repudiated by one of the parties,
"Therefore,... the Fugitive
Slave Law of 1850 must be repealed." But this is not the reason why
an iniquitous law should be repealed. The fact which the politician faces
is merely that there is less honor among thieves than was supposed, and
not the fact that they are thieves.
As I had no opportunity to express my thoughts at
that meeting, will you allow me to do so here?
Again it happens that the Boston Court-House is full
of armed men, holding prisoner and trying a MAN, to find out if he is not
really a SLAVE. Does any one think that justice or God awaits Mr. Loring's
decision? For him to sit there deciding still, when this question is already
decided from eternity to eternity, and the unlettered slave himself and
the multitude around have long since heard and assented to the decision,
is simply to make himself ridiculous. We may be tempted to ask from whom
he received his commission, and who he is that received it; what novel
statutes he obeys, and what precedents are to him of authority. Such an
arbiter's very existence is an impertinence. We do not ask him to make
up his mind, but to make up his pack.
I listen to hear the voice of a Governor, Commander-in-Chief
of the forces of Massachusetts. I hear only the creaking of crickets and
the hum of insects which now fill the summer air. The Governor's exploit
is to review the troops on muster days. I have seen him on horseback, with
his hat off, listening to a chaplain's prayer. It chances that that is
all I have ever seen of a Governor. I think that I could manage to get
along without one. If he is not of the least use to prevent my being
kidnapped, pray of what important use is he likely to be to me? When freedom
is most endangered, he dwells in the deepest obscurity. A distinguished
clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it
afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him
the profession of a Governor.
Three years ago, also, when the Sims tragedy was
acted, I said to myself, There is such an officer, if not such a man, as
the Governor of Massachusetts -- what has he been about the last fortnight?
Has he had as much as he could do to keep on the fence during this moral
earthquake? It seemed to me that no keener satire could have been aimed
at, no more cutting insult have been offered to that man, than just what
happened -- the absence of all inquiry after him in that crisis. The worst
and the most I chance to know of him is that he did not improve that opportunity
to make himself known, and worthily known. He could at least have resigned
himself into fame. It appeared to be forgotten that there was such a man
or such an office. Yet no doubt he was endeavoring to fill the gubernatorial
chair all the while. He was no Governor of mine. He did not govern me.
But at last, in the present case, the Governor was
heard from. After he and the United States government had perfectly succeeded
in robbing a poor innocent black man of his liberty for life, and, as far
as they could, of his Creator's likeness in his breast, he made a speech
to his accomplices, at a congratulatory supper!
I have read a recent law of this State, making it
penal for any officer of the "Commonwealth" to "detain or aid in the...
detention," anywhere within its limits, "of any person, for the reason
that he is claimed as a fugitive slave." Also, it was a matter of notoriety
that a writ of replevin to take the fugitive out of the custody of the
United States Marshal could not be served for want of sufficient force
to aid the officer.
I had thought that the Governor was, in some sense,
the executive officer of the State; that it was his business, as a Governor,
to see that the laws of the State were executed; while, as a man, he took
care that he did not, by so doing, break the laws of humanity; but when
there is any special important use for him, he is useless, or worse than
useless, and permits the laws of the State to go unexecuted. Perhaps I
do not know what are the duties of a Governor; but if to be a Governor
requires to subject one's self to so much ignominy without remedy, if it
is to put a restraint upon my manhood, I shall take care never to be Governor
of Massachusetts. I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth.
It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true; and
they do not always mean what they say. What I am concerned to know is,
that that man's influence and authority were on the side of the slaveholder,
and not of the slave -- of the guilty, and not of the innocent -- of injustice,
and not of justice. I never saw him of whom I speak; indeed, I did not
know that he was Governor until this event occurred. I heard of him and
Anthony Burns at the same time, and thus, undoubtedly, most will hear of
him. So far am I from being governed by him. I do not mean that it was
anything to his discredit that I had not heard of him, only that I heard
what I did. The worst I shall say of him is, that he proved no better than
the majority of his constituents would be likely to prove. In my opinion,
be was not equal to the occasion.
The whole military force of the State is at the service
of a Mr. Suttle, a slaveholder from Virginia, to enable him to catch a
man whom he calls his property; but not a soldier is offered to save a
citizen of Massachusetts from being kidnapped! Is this what all these soldiers,
all this training, have been for these seventy-nine years past?
Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico and carry back fugitive slaves
to their masters?
These very nights I heard the sound of a drum in
our streets. There were men training still; and for what? I could
with an effort pardon the cockerels of Concord for crowing still, for they,
perchance, had not been beaten that morning; but I could not excuse this
rub-a-dub of the "trainers." The slave was carried back by exactly such
as these; i.e., by the soldier, of whom the best you can say in this connection
is that he is a fool made conspicuous by a painted coat.
Three years ago, also, just a week after the authorities
of Boston assembled to carry back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom
they knew to be innocent, into slavery, the inhabitants of Concord caused
the bells to be rung and the cannons to be fired, to celebrate their liberty
-- and the courage and love of liberty of their ancestors who fought at
the bridge. As if those three millions had fought for the right
to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three million others. Nowadays,
men wear a fool's-cap, and call it a liberty-cap. I do not know but there
are some who, if they were tied to a whipping-post, and could but get one
hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannons to celebrate
their
liberty. So some of my townsmen took the liberty to ring and fire. That
was the extent of their freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away,
their liberty died away also; when the powder was all expended, their liberty
went off with the smoke.
The joke could be no broader if the inmates of the
prisons were to subscribe for all the powder to be used in such salutes,
and hire the jailers to do the firing and ringing for them, while they
enjoyed it through the grating.
This is what I thought about my neighbors.
Every humane and intelligent inhabitant of Concord,
when he or she heard those bells and those cannons, thought not with pride
of the events of the 19th of April, 1775, but with shame of the events
of the 12th of April, 1851. But now we have half buried that old shame
under a new one.
Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring's decision,
as if it could in any way affect her own criminality. Her crime, the most
conspicuous and fatal crime of all, was permitting him to be the umpire
in such a case. It was really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment
that she hesitated to set this man free -- every moment that she now hesitates
to atone for her crime, she is convicted. The Commissioner on her case
is God; not Edward G. God, but simply God.
I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the
human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the
least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having
to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice,
and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the
world.
Much has been said about American slavery, but I
think that we do not even yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously
to propose to Congress to make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that
most of the members would smile at my proposition, and if any believed
me to be in earnest, they would think that I proposed something much worse
than Congress had ever done. But if any of them will tell me that to make
a man into a sausage would be much worse -- would be any worse -- than
to make him into a slave -- than it was to enact the Fugitive Slave Law,
I will accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of making
a distinction without a difference. The one is just as sensible a proposition
as the other.
I hear a good deal said about trampling this law
under foot. Why, one need not go out of his way to do that. This law rises
not to the level of the head or the reason; its natural habitat is in the
dirt. It was born and bred, and has its life, only in the dust and mire,
on a level with the feet; and he who walks with freedom, and does not with
Hindoo mercy avoid treading on every venomous reptile, will inevitably
tread on it, and so trample it under foot -- and Webster, its maker, with
it, like the dirt-bug and its ball.
Recent events will be valuable as a criticism on
the administration of justice in our midst, or, rather, as showing what
are the true resources of justice in any community. It has come to this,
that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have shuddered when
they have understood that his fate was left to the legal tribunals of the
country to be decided. Free men have no faith that justice will be awarded
in such a case. The judge may decide this way or that; it is a kind of
accident, at best. It is evident that he is not a competent authority in
so important a case. It is no time, then, to be judging according to his
precedents, but to establish a precedent for the future. I would much rather
trust to the sentiment of the people. In their vote you would get something
of some value, at least, however small; but in the other case, only the
trammeled judgment of an individual, of no significance, be it which way
it might.
It is to some extent fatal to the courts, when the
people are compelled to go behind them. I do not wish to believe that the
courts were made for fair weather, and for very civil cases merely; but
think of leaving it to any court in the land to decide whether more than
three millions of people, in this case a sixth part of a nation, have a
right to be freemen or not! But it has been left to the courts of justice,
so called -- to the Supreme Court of the land -- and, as you all know,
recognizing no authority but the Constitution, it has decided that the
three millions are and shall continue to be slaves. Such judges as these
are merely the inspectors of a pick-lock and murderer's tools, to tell
him whether they are in working order or not, and there they think that
their responsibility ends. There was a prior case on the docket, which
they, as judges appointed by God, had no right to skip; which having been
justly settled, they would have been saved from this humiliation. It was
the case of the murderer himself.
The law will never make men free; it is men who have
got to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order who observe
the law when the government breaks it.
Among human beings, the judge whose words seal the
fate of a man furthest into eternity is not he who merely pronounces the
verdict of the law, but he, whoever he may be, who, from a love of truth,
and unprejudiced by any custom or enactment of men, utters a true opinion
or sentence concerning him. He it is that sentences him.
Whoever can discern truth has received his commission from a higher source
than the chiefest justice in the world who can discern only law. He finds
himself constituted judge of the judge. Strange that it should be necessary
to state such simple truths!
I am more and more convinced that, with reference
to any public question, it is more important to know what the country thinks
of it than what the city thinks. The city does not think much. On
any moral question, I would rather have the opinion of Boxboro' than of
Boston and New York put together. When the former speaks, I feel as if
somebody had spoken, as if humanity was yet, and a reasonable
being had asserted its rights -- as if some unprejudiced men among the
country's hills had at length turned their attention to the subject, and
by a few sensible words redeemed the reputation of the race. When, in some
obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town-meeting,
to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing the land, that,
I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever
assembled in the United States.
It is evident that there are, in this Commonwealth
at least, two parties, becoming more and more distinct -- the party of
the city, and the party of the country. I know that the country is mean
enough, but I am glad to believe that there is a slight difference in her
favor. But as yet she has few, if any organs, through which to express
herself. The editorials which she reads, like the news, come from the seaboard.
Let us, the inhabitants of the country, cultivate self-respect. Let us
not send to the city for aught more essential than our broadcloths and
groceries; or, if we read the opinions of the city, let us entertain opinions
of our own.
Among measures to be adopted, I would suggest to
make as earnest and vigorous an assault on the press as has already been
made, and with effect, on the church. The church has much improved within
a few years; but the press is, almost without exception, corrupt. I believe
that in this country the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence
than the church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people,
but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we
do care for the newspaper. At any meeting of politicians -- like that at
Concord the other evening, for instance -- how impertinent it would be
to quote from the Bible! how pertinent to quote from a newspaper or from
the Constitution! The newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning
and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a
Bible which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table
and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are continually
dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America has printed and
which America reads. So wide is its influence. The editor is a preacher
whom you voluntarily support. Your tax is commonly one cent daily, and
it costs nothing for pew hire. But how many of these preachers preach the
truth? I repeat the testimony of many an intelligent foreigner, as well
as my own convictions, when I say, that probably no country was ever rubled
by so mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the
editors of the periodical press in this country. And as they live
and rule only by their servility, and appealing to the worse, and not the
better, nature of man, the people who read them are in the condition of
the dog that returns to his vomit.
The Liberator and the Commonwealth
were the only papers in Boston, as far as I know, which made themselves
heard in condemnation of the cowardice and meanness of the authorities
of that city, as exhibited in '51. The other journals, almost without exception,
by their manner of referring to and speaking of the Fugitive Slave Law,
and the carrying back of the slave Sims, insulted the common sense of the
country, at least. And, for the most part, they did this, one would say,
because they thought so to secure the approbation of their patrons, not
being aware that a sounder sentiment prevailed to any extent in the heart
of the Commonwealth. I am told that some of them have improved of late;
but they are still eminently time-serving. Such is the character they have
won.
But, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more
easily reached by the weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest.
The free men of New England have only to refrain from purchasing and reading
these sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of them
at once. One whom I respect told me that he purchased Mitchell's Citizen
in the cars, and then throw it out the window. But would not his contempt
have been more fatally expressed if he had not bought it?
Are they Americans? are they New Englanders? are
they inhabitants of Lexington and Concord and Framingham, who read and
support the Boston Post, Mail, Journal, Advertiser,
Courier,
and Times? Are these the Flags of our Union? I am not a newspaper
reader, and may omit to name the worst.
Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than
some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does
not lick, and make fouler still with its slime? I do not know whether the
Boston Herald is still in existence, but I remember to have seen
it about the streets when Sims was carried off. Did it not act its part
well-serve its master faithfully! How could it have gone lower on its belly?
How can a man stoop lower than he is low? do more than put his extremities
in the place of the head he has? than make his head his lower extremity?
When I have taken up this paper with my cuffs turned up, I have heard the
gurgling of the sewer through every column. I have felt that I was handling
a paper picked out of the public gutters, a leaf from the gospel of the
gambling-house, the groggery, and the brothel, harmonizing with the gospel
of the Merchants' Exchange.
The majority of the men of the North, and of the
South and East and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do
not send men to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers
and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty, while -- I
might here insert all that slavery implies and is -- it is the mismanagement
of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them. Do what you will,
O Government, with my wife and children, my mother and brother, my father
and sister, I will obey your commands to the letter. It will indeed grieve
me if you hurt them, if you deliver them to overseers to be hunted by bounds
or to be whipped to death; but, nevertheless, I will peaceably pursue my
chosen calling on this fair earth, until perchance, one day, when I have
put on mourning for them dead, I shall have persuaded you to relent. Such
is the attitude, such are the words of Massachusetts.
Rather than do thus, I need not say what match I
would touch, what system endeavor to blow up; but as I love my life, I
would side with the light, and let the dark earth roll from under me, calling
my mother and my brother to follow.
I would remind my countrymen that they are to be
men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. No matter
how valuable law may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and
body together, if it do not keep you and humanity together.
I am sorry to say that I doubt if there is a judge
in Massachusetts who is prepared to resign his office, and get his living
innocently, whenever it is required of him to pass sentence under a law
which is merely contrary to the law of God. I am compelled to see that
they put themselves, or rather are by character, in this respect, exactly
on a level with the marine who discharges his musket in any direction he
is ordered to. They are just as much tools, and as little men. Certainly,
they are not the more to be respected, because their master enslaves their
understandings and consciences, instead of their bodies.
The judges and lawyers -- simply as such, I mean
-- and all men of expediency, try this case by a very low and incompetent
standard. They consider, not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right, but
whether it is what they call constitutional. Is virtue constitutional,
or vice? Is equity constitutional, or iniquity? In important moral and
vital questions, like this, it is just as impertinent to ask whether a
law is constitutional or not, as to ask whether it is profitable or not.
They persist in being the servants of the worst of men, and not the servants
of humanity. The question is, not whether you or your grandfather, seventy
years ago, did not enter into an agreement to serve the Devil, and that
service is not accordingly now due; but whether you will not now, for once
and at last, serve God -- in spite of your own past recreancy, or that
of your ancestor -- by obeying that eternal and only just CONSTITUTION,
which He, and not any Jefferson or Adams, has written in your being.
The amount of it is, if the majority vote the Devil
to be God, the minority will live and behave accordingly -- and obey the
successful candidate, trusting that, some time or other, by some Speaker's
casting-vote, perhaps, they may reinstate God. This is the highest principle
I can get out or invent for my neighbors. These men act as if they believed
that they could safely slide down a hill a little way -- or a good way
-- and would surely come to a place, by and by, where they could begin
to slide up again. This is expediency, or choosing that course which offers
the slightest obstacles to the feet, that is, a downhill one. But there
is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of "expediency."
There is no such thing as sliding up hill. In morals the only sliders are
backsliders.
Thus we steadily worship Mammon, both school and
state and church, and on the seventh day curse God with a tintamar from
one end of the Union to the other.
Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality
-- that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is
expedient? chooses the available candidate -- who is invariably the Devil
-- and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the Devil
does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy,
but of probity -- who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or
the decision of the majority. The fate of the country does not depend on
how you vote at the polls -- the worst man is as strong as the best at
that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box
once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the
street every morning.
What should concern Massachusetts is not the Nebraska
Bill, nor the Fugitive Slave Bill, but her own slaveholding and servility.
Let the State dissolve her union with the slaveholder. She may wriggle
and hesitate, and ask leave to read the Constitution once more; but she
can find no respectable law or precedent which sanctions the continuance
of such a union for an instant.
Let each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union
with her, as long as she delays to do her duty.
The events of the past month teach me to distrust
Fame. I see that she does not finely discriminate, but coarsely hurrahs.
She considers not the simple heroism of an action, but only as it is connected
with its apparent consequences. She praises till she is hoarse the easy
exploit of the Boston tea party, but will be comparatively silent about
the braver and more disinterestedly heroic attack on the Boston Court-House,
simply because it was unsuccessful!
Covered with disgrace, the State has sat down coolly
to try for their lives and liberties the men who attempted to do its duty
for it. And this is called justice! They who have shown that they
can behave particularly well may perchance be put under bonds for their
good behavior. They whom truth requires at present to plead guilty
are, of all the inhabitants of the State, preeminently innocent. While
the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth
are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.
Only they are guiltless who commit the crime of contempt
of such a court. It behooves every man to see that his influence is on
the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters. My sympathies
in this case are wholly with the accused, and wholly against their accusers
and judges. Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.
The judge still sits grinding at his organ, but it yields no music, and
we hear only the sound of the handle. He believes that all the music resides
in the handle, and the crowd toss him their coppers the same as before.
Do you suppose that that Massachusetts which is now
doing these things -- which hesitates to crown these men, some of whose
lawyers, and even judges, perchance, may be driven to take refuge in some
poor quibble, that they may not wholly outrage their instinctive sense
of justice -- do you suppose that she is anything but base and servile?
that she is the champion of liberty?
Show me a free state, and a court truly of justice,
and I will fight for them, if need be; but show me Massachusetts, and I
refuse her my allegiance, and express contempt for her courts.
The effect of a good government is to make life more
valuable -- of a bad one, to make it less valuable. We can afford that
railroad and all merely material stock should lose some of its value, for
that only compels us to live more simply and economically; but suppose
that the value of life itself should be diminished! How can we make a less
demand on man and nature, how live more economically in respect to virtue
and all noble qualities, than we do? I have lived for the last month --
and I think that every man in Massachusetts capable of the sentiment of
patriotism must have had a similar experience -- with the sense of having
suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not know at first what ailed
me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country. I had
never respected the government near to which I lived, but I had foolishly
thought that I might manage to live here, minding my private affairs, and
forget it. For my part, my old and worthiest pursuits have lost I cannot
say how much of their attraction, and I feel that my investment in life
here is worth many per cent less since Massachusetts last deliberately
sent back an innocent man, Anthony Burns, to slavery. I dwelt before, perhaps,
in the illusion that my life passed somewhere only between heaven
and hell, but now I cannot persuade myself that I do not dwell wholly
within hell. The site of that political organization called Massachusetts
is to me morally covered with volcanic scoriae and cinders, such as Milton
describes in the infernal regions. If there is any hell more unprincipled
than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it. Life itself
being worth less, all things with it, which minister to it, are worth less.
Suppose you have a small library, with pictures to adorn the walls -- a
garden laid out around -- and contemplate scientific and literary pursuits.&c.,
and discover all at once that your villa, with all its contents is located
in hell, and that the justice of the peace has a cloven foot and a forked
tail -- do not these things suddenly lose their value in your eyes?
I feel that, to some extent, the State has fatally
interfered with my lawful business. It has not only interrupted me in my
passage through Court Street on errands of trade, but it has interrupted
me and every man on his onward and upward path, on which he had trusted
soon to leave Court Street far behind. What right had it to remind me of
Court Street? I have found that hollow which even I had relied on for solid.
I am surprised to see men going about their business
as if nothing had happened. I say to myself, "Unfortunates! they have not
heard the news." I am surprised that the man whom I just met on horseback
should be so earnest to overtake his newly bought cows running away --
since all property is insecure, and if they do not run away again, they
may be taken away from him when he gets them. Fool! does he not know that
his seed-corn is worth less this year -- that all beneficent harvests fail
as you approach the empire of hell? No prudent man will build a stone house
under these circumstances, or engage in any peaceful enterprise which it
requires a long time to accomplish. Art is as long as ever, but life is
more interrupted and less available for a man's proper pursuits. It is
not an era of repose. We have used up all our inherited freedom. If we
would save our lives, we must fight for them.
I walk toward one of our ponds; but what signifies
the beauty of nature when men are base? We walk to lakes to see our serenity
reflected in them; when we are not serene, we go not to them. Who can be
serene in a country where both the rulers and the ruled are without principle?
The remembrance of my country spoils my walk. My thoughts are murder to
the State, and involuntarily go plotting against her.
But it chanced the other day that I scented a white
water-lily, and a season I had waited for had arrived. It is the emblem
of purity. It bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the
scent, as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be
extracted from, the slime and muck of earth. I think I have plucked the
first one that has opened for a mile. What confirmation of our hopes is
in the fragrance of this flower! I shall not so soon despair of the world
for it, notwithstanding slavery, and the cowardice and want of principle
of Northern men. It suggests what kind of laws have prevailed longest and
widest, and still prevail, and that the time may come when man's deeds
will smell as sweet. Such is the odor which the plant emits. If Nature
can compound this fragrance still annually, I shall believe her still young
and full of vigor, her integrity and genius unimpaired, and that there
is virtue even in man, too, who is fitted to perceive and love it. It reminds
me that Nature has been partner to no Missouri Compromise. I scent no compromise
in the fragrance of the water-lily. It is not a Nymphoea Douglasii.
In it, the sweet, and pure, and innocent are wholly sundered from the obscene
and baleful. I do not scent in this the time-serving irresolution of a
Massachusetts Governor, nor of a Boston Mayor. So behave that the odor
of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that
when we behold or scent a flower, we may not be reminded how inconsistent
your deeds are with it; for all odor is but one form of advertisement of
a moral quality, and if fair actions had not been performed, the lily would
not smell sweet. The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the
decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity
and courage which are immortal.
Slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented
flower annually, to charm the senses of men, for they have no real life:
they are merely a decaying and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils.
We do not complain that they live, but that they do not get buried.
Let the living bury them: even they are good for manure.
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