Among those who suffered real physical injury was
Fred. Douglass, the runaway slave. While in bondage
he was often severely punished, but he encountered
rougher treatment in the North than in the South.
He was attacked by a mob while lecturing in the State
of Indiana; was struck to the earth and rendered senseless
by blows on the head and body, and for a time his
life was supposed to be in danger. Although in
the main he recovered, his right hand was always crippled
in consequence of some of its bones having been broken.
ANTI-SLAVERY MARTYRS
If any one is desirous of estimating the extent of
the sacrifice of life, of treasure, of home and family
comforts, and of innumerable fair hopes that the institution
of slavery, in its struggle, not merely for existence,
but for supremacy, cost this country, let him visit
a government cemetery in the neighborhood of one of
the great battle-fields of the Rebellion, and there,
while looking down the long avenues lined with memorial
stones that a grateful country has set up, make inquiry
as to the number of those that are there bivouacked
“in fame’s eternal camping ground.”
Some idea—a faint one it is true—will
then be had of the multitudes that gave up all they
possessed that liberty might live and rule in this
fair land of ours. They were martyrs in the very
highest sense to Freedom’s immeasurable cause.
The war was the product of slavery. It was the
natural outcome of the great moral conflict that had
so long raged in this country. It was simply
the development of an agitation that had begun on other
lines.
But there were martyrs to the cause of freedom before
the war. Everybody knows more or less of the
story of John Brown, of Ossawatomie, whose soul kept
“marching on,” although his body was “a-mouldering
in the grave.”
There was another case involving the surrender of
life to that cause, which has always struck me as
having stronger claims to our sympathies than that
of John Brown and his comrades in self-sacrifice.
I have already referred to Elijah P. Lovejoy who was
a young Congregational clergyman, who went from the
State of Maine to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1839.
He became the editor of a religious journal in which
he expressed, in very moderate terms, an opinion that
was not favorable to slave-holding. The supporters
of the institution were aroused at once. They
demanded a retraction. “I have sworn eternal
hostility to slavery, and by the blessing of God I
will never go back,” was his reply. He
also declared, “We have slaves here, but I am
not one of them.”
