Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/231

218 shoulder; and then one hundred thousand women would have followed, bringing the rest of the muskets. That would have been the state of things if she had been a white Caucasian woman, and not a black African. We should not then have asked Quakers to lead in the greatest enterprise in the world: the leaders would have been soldiers; I mean such men as our fathers, who did not content themselves with asking Great Britain to leave off oppressing them. They asked that first; and when Great Britain said, "Please God, we never will!" what did the Saxon say? "Please God, I will make you!" And he kept his word.

That would have been the talk. Meetings would have been "opened with prayer" by men who trusted in God, and like kept their powder dry. But in this case it was otherwise. The work has not been to arouse the indignation of the enslaved, but to stir the humanity of the oppressor, to touch his conscience, his affection, his religious sentiment; or to show that his political and pecuniary interests required the freedom of all men in America. And it has been very fortunate for us that this great enterprise fell into the hands of just such men as these,—that it was not soldiers who chiefly engaged in it, but men of peace. By and by I will show you why. The attempt was made at first, and by that gentleman too (pointing to Mr. Garrison), with others, to arouse the anti-Slavery feeling in the actual slave-holders at the South. You know what followed. He and every one who tried it there were driven over the border. Then the attempt was made at the North; and there it has been continued. It is exceedingly important to get a right anti-Slavery feeling at the North: for two-thirds of the population are at the North; three-fourths of the property, four-fifths of the education are here, and I suppose six-sevenths of the Chris-