The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VII, Complete The Conflict with Slavery, Politics and Reform, the Inner Life, and Criticism

Bernardin St. Pierre, whose pathetic tale of "Paul and Virginia" has found admirers in every language of the civilized world, in a fragment, entitled "Arcadia," attempted to dep...

"There is not one general principle," justly remarks Lord Nugent, "on which the slave-trade is to be stigmatized which does not impeach slavery itself." Kindred in iniquity, bot...

In an official letter from the Mexican Envoy of the British Government, dated Mexico, March, 1826, and addressed 'to the Right Hon. George Canning, the superiority of free over...

"And here it may be well to observe, that as long as negro slavery lasts, all colonies on the African coast, of whatever description, must tend to support it, because, in all co...

We therefore hold it to be the duty of the people of the slave-holding states to begin the work of emancipation now; that any delay must be dangerous to themselves in time and e...

In dealing with the guilty leaders and instigators of the rebellion we should beware how we take counsel of passion. Hatred has no place beside the calm and awful dignity of jus...

"And not alone these wide, Deep-planted yearnings, seeking with a cry Their meat from God, in Thee are satisfied; But all our instincts waking suddenly Within the soul, like inf...

Our author does not, however, take us altogether by surprise. He has before given no uncertain intimations of the point towards which his philosophy was tending. In his brillian...

"The Devil," said Samson Occum, the famous Indian preacher, in a discourse on temperance, "is a gentleman, and never drinks." Nevertheless it is a remarkable fact, and worthy of...

I fear these epithets have not been wholly misapplied. Have we not been told here, gravely and authoritatively, by some of our learned judges, divines, and politicians, that we,...

Looking at the matter from the point of theory only, we should say that a physician could not be otherwise than melancholy. A merry doctor! Why, one might as well talk of a laug...

"With other ministrations thou, O Nature, Healest thy wandering and distempered child Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,...

The reading of the paper was followed by a discussion which lasted several hours. A member of the Society of Friends moved its immediate adoption. "We have," he said, "all given...

DEAR FRIEND,--It gives me great pleasure to know that the pupils in thy class at the Institution for the Blind have the opportunity afforded them to read through the sense of to...

Still later, a descendant of the persecuted French Protestants, Anthony Benezet, a man of uncommon tenderness of feeling, began to write and speak against slavery. How far, if a...

It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite resort. The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among these flower-sown graves, watc...

Slavery alone lays its grasp upon the right of personal ownership, that foundation right, the removal of which uncreates the man; a right which God himself could not take away w...

To those who judge by the outward appearance, nothing is more difficult of explanation than the strength of moral influence often exerted by obscure and uneventful lives. Some g...

It will be noted throughout the Journal and essays that in his lifelong testimony against wrong he never lost sight of the oneness of humanity, its common responsibility, its fe...

With these legacies of devout souls, it seems to me, the little volume herewith presented is not wholly unworthy of a place. It assumes the life and power of the gospel as a mat...

THE CONFLICT WITH SLAVERY JUSTICE AND EXPEDIENCY THE ABOLITIONISTS; THEIR SENTIMENTS AND OBJECTS LETTER TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL JOHN QUINCY ADAMS THE BIBLE AND SLAVERY WHAT IS SLAVE...

"On the 2d of October, 1639, about nine o'clock in the morning, Mr. Maverick's negro woman," says Josselyn, "came to my chamber, and in her own country language and tune sang ve...

I am no blind partisan of Charles Sumner. I have often differed from him in opinion. I regretted deeply the position which he thought it his duty to take during the late preside...

The influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means been confined to the religious society of which he was a member. It may be traced wherever a step in the dir...

There are, in short, perfectionist reformers as well as religionists, who wait to see the salvation which it is the task of humanity itself to work out, and who look down from a...