Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/133

 ACTS OF THf: APOSTLES OF ANTI-SLAVERY.

��113

��ACTS OF THE APOSTLES OF ANTI-SLAVERY.

��BV HENRY P. ROLFE.

��There is living with ns one of whom the present generation — until recently — has heard little, and knows less. We frequently meet him in our daily walks, and his light, buoyant step, his keen, dark eye, his marked, observing countenance — at an age verging upon four score years — would point him out to a stranger as no ordinary man. His eye is hardly dimmed with age, and his natural force is but little abated. His friends can not fail to notice in this description, Parker Pillsbury, who from 1840 to 1863 was known, in New England, at least, as the Boanerges of the cause of Anti-Slavery, — of imme- diate and unconditional emancipation of all the slaves in this land. He dates his beginning " in that sublime enterprise " at the commencement of the year 1840. He was then a li- censed preacher of the gospel in the Congregational denomination ; and he at once enlisted, soul and body, in the cause of the down -trodden slave, and never abated one jot or tittle of his industry or his zeal till he saw the manacles fall from the limbs of four millions of his fellow-beings ! During the few years past he has been engaged in writing a book, entitled, "Acts of the Apostles of Anti-Slavery ; " and most ably and faithfully has he done his work. A book of five hundred pages, recently published, attests to his ca- pacity and to his fidelity. There is no one living, except Parker P^lsbury, who can bring before the eyes of the present generation a correct, minute, comprehensive and entertaining record of the times when certain patient, courageous, self-sacrificing men and women laid aside all seeming present good, and every prospect of future advantage, and " went every where preaching the word," and every where, in the name of the Prince of Peace, demanding " deliverance to the cap- VII— 8

��tive." JJke the ancient historian,, he can say I have written a history, " part of which I saw and part of which I was." His life mission is suc- cessfully completed, and " he has seen the travail of his soul and is satisfied." •' Heaven has bounteously lengthened out his life that he might behold the joyous day " of the emancipation of four millions of slaves, whose rights he had advocated and whose wrongs he had portrayed with a power andi eloquence never surpassed by any one of his able contemporaries.

Nathaniel P. Rogers, in October, 1842, soon after he entered the lecture field, wrote as follows of him :

" The iibolitionists of the country ought to know Parker Pillsbury better than they do. I know him in all that is noble in soul, and powerful in talent and eloquence. The remote district school-house in New Hampshire, and the old granite county of Essex, Mas- sachusetts, where he was born, would bear me witness to all I could say. He is one of the strong men of our age. * * * * * We passed the soli- tary school-house a few days since, where he was allowed the few weeks' schooling of his childhood ; but thanks they were so few ! He was educating all the better for humanity's service on the rugged farm. He there taught himself to be a man. A great lesson he had effectually learned before he came in contact with seminaries and a priesthood. These proved unequal, on that account, to overmatch and cower down his homespun nobility of soul. They tied their fetters round his manly limbs, but he snapped them as Samson did the withes, and went out an abolitionist, carrying off the very theological gates with him upon his manly shoulders."

There were Nathaniel P. Rogers and Stephen S. Foster of New Hampshire,

�� �