Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/86

76 and mob violence without flinching. In doing what they did, they could win neither money nor popularity nor power. Their work was one of constant self-denial and sacrifice. It is true they were not, in the ordinary sense, statesmen. They did not weigh present possibilities. They did not measure immediate consequences. They did not calculate the relation between the means available and the ends to be accomplished. But theirs was after all the statesmanship of the prophets, which is seldom appreciated by the living generation. If it was true that the universal and immediate emancipation they preached could not be undertaken without great economic disturbance, pecuniary loss, social disorder, and perhaps bloodshed, it was equally true that the longer emancipation was put off the more inevitable and the greater would be the loss, disorder, and bloodshed. The abolitionists had a sublime belief in the justice of their cause, and in the sacredness of their duty to serve that cause. Thus they had the stuff in them of which the moral heroes in history are made. It is difficult to imagine a figure more heroic than William Lloyd Garrison with the rope about his body, the respectability of the town howling for his blood. The unselfishness of their devotion did not fail to extort respect. Such men could not be suppressed. They forced an unwilling people to hear them, and they were heard.

The number of abolition societies grew, not rapidly, but steadily. The leading abolitionists