Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/73

60 the consciousness of America. Some men knew these things before, but the mass of men know them not.

So much for the general causes.

Now look at some of the special causes. I shall limit myself chiefly to those which Massachusetts has had a share in putting into activity.

In 1826, on the 9th of March, Mr. Edward Everett made a speech in Congress. He was the representative of Middlesex County. Once he was a minister of the church where John Hancock used to worship, and as clergyman officially resided in the house which John Hancock gave to that church. Next, he was a Professor in Harvard College, where the Adamses—the three Adamses, Samuel, John, and John Quincy—were educated, and where John Hancock had graduated. He represented Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker HiU, and in his speech he said:—

"Neither am I one of those citizens of the North who would think it immoral and irreligious to join in putting down a servile insurrection at the South, t am no soldier, sir. My habits and education are very unmilitary; but there is no cause in which I would sooner buckle a knapsack to my back, and put a musket to my shoulder, than that." "Domestic slavery … is not, in my judgment, to be set down as an immoral or irreligious institution." "Its duties are presupposed by religion." "The New Testament says, ’Slaves, obey your masters.'" The Daily Advertiser defended Mr. Everett, declaring that it was perfectly right in him to justify the continuance of the relation between the master and his slaves, and added (I am now quoting from the Daily Advertiser of March 28th, 1826):— "We hold that it is not time, and never will be, that we should be aroused to any efforts for their redemption." That was the answer which the "respectability of Boston" gave to Mr. Everett's speech. True, some journals protested against the iniquitous statement; even the Christian Register was indignant. But Middlesex County sent him again. Lexington, and Corcord, and Bunker Hill, returned their apostate representative a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth time. And, when he was weary of that honour, the State of Massachusetts made him her Governor, and he carried to the State