The abolition
of slavery must be demanded by the moral instinct of a people before
their understanding may be satisfied of its practical fitness and
material success. The evidences in favor of emancipation are useful
after the same manner as the evidences of Christianity: the man whose
heart cannot he stirred by the tender appeal of the Gospel shall not be
persuaded by the exegetical charming of the most orthodox expositor.
But now that circumstances have caused loyal American citizens to think
upon slavery, and to mark with a quickened moral perception its enormous
usurpations, there could be no publication more timely than this volume
by M. Cochin. To be sure, all illustration of the results of this
legalized injustice, derived from a past experience, must be tame to
those who stand face to face with the gigantic conspiracy in which it
has concentrated its venom, and from which it must stagger to its doom.
The familiar proverb which declares that the gods make mad those whom
they would destroy has a significance not always considered. For when a
man loses his intellectual equilibrium, a baseness of character which
never broke through the crust of conventionality may be suddenly
revealed; and when a wicked system goes mad, such depths of perfidy are
disclosed as few imagined to exist. During the last two years, while our
Southern sky has been aglow with the red light of the slave-masters'
insurrection, few of us could probe and pry about among details of
lesser villanies than those pertinent to the day.
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