“During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery,” he confides to the reader, “every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the fact, that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free States—­and particularly in New England—­than at the South.  I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless; prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than among slaveowners themselves.  Of course there were individual exceptions to the contrary.  This state of things afflicted, but did not dishearten me.  I determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill, and in the birthplace of liberty.”  This final choice of Boston as a base from which to operate against slavery was sagacious, and of the greatest moment to the success of the experiment and to its effective service to the cause.

If the reformer changed his original intention respecting the place of publication for his paper, he made no alteration of his position on the subject of slavery.  “I shall strenuously contend,” he declares in the salutatory, “for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population.”  “In Park Street Church,” he goes on to add, “on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition.  I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren, the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice, and absurdity.”

To those who find fault with his harsh language he makes reply:  “I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice.  On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.  No! no!  Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen—­but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.  I am in earnest—­I will not equivocate—­I will not excuse—­I will not retreat a single inch—­AND I WILL BE HEARD.”  Martin Luther’s “Here I take my stand,” was not braver or grander than the “I will be heard,” of the American reformer.  It did not seem possible that a young man, without influence, without money, standing almost alone, could ever make good those courageous words.  The country, in Church and State, had decreed silence on the subject of slavery; the patriotism of the North, its commerce, its piety, its labor and capital had all joined hands to smother agitation, and stifle the discussion of a question that imperilled the peace and durability of Webster’s glorious Union.  But one man, tearing the gag from his lips, defying all these, cried, “Silence, there shall not be!” and forthwith the whole land began to talk on the forbidden theme: