Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/32

xxii at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful word-selection which reflection and patient brooding over them might have given. Such as they are, they belong to the history of the Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks of its progress. If their language at times seems severe and harsh, the monstrous wrong of Slavery which provoked it must be its excuse, if any is needed. In attacking it, we did not measure our words. “It is,” said Garrison, “a waste of politeness to be courteous to the devil.” But in truth the contest was, in a great measure, an impersonal one, hatred of slavery and not of slave-masters.

Even Thomas Jefferson, in his terrible denunciation of Slavery in the “Notes on Virginia,” says: “It is impossible to be temperate and pursue the subject of Slavery.”

After the great contest was over, no class of the American people were more ready, with kind words and deprecation of harsh retaliation, to welcome back the revolted States than the Abolitionists; and none have since more heartily rejoiced at the fast increasing prosperity of the South.

Grateful for the measure of favor which has been accorded to my writings, I leave this edition with the public. It contains all that I care to republish, and some things which, had the matter of choice been left solely to myself, I should have omitted.

J. G. W.