from Africa.[2] ...  The ruins of the Egyptian temples laugh to scorn the architectural monuments of any other part of the world.  They will be what they are now, the delight and admiration of travelers from all quarters, when the grass is growing on the sites of St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s, the present pride of Rome and London....  It seems, therefore, that for this very civilization of which we are so proud, and which is the only ground of our present claim of superiority, we are indebted to the ancestors of these very blacks, whom we are pleased to consider as naturally incapable of civilization.”

[Footnote 1:  See “The Anti-Slavery Picknick:  a collection of Speeches, Poems, Dialogues, and Songs, intended for use in schools and anti-slavery meetings.  By John A. Collins, Boston, 1842,” 10-12.]

[Footnote 2:  It is worthy of note that this argument, which was long thought to be fallacious, is more and more coming to be substantiated by the researches of scholars, and that not only as affecting Northern but also Negro Africa.  Note Lady Lugard (Flora L. Shaw):  A Tropical Dependency, London, 1906, pp. 16-18.]

In adherence to their convictions the Abolitionists were now to give a demonstration of faith in humanity such as has never been surpassed except by Jesus Christ himself.  They believed in the Negro even before the Negro had learned to believe in himself.  Acting on their doctrine of equal rights, they traveled with their Negro friends, “sat upon the same platforms with them, ate with them, and one enthusiastic abolitionist white couple adopted a Negro child."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Hart:  Slavery and Abolition, 245-6.]

Garrison appealed to posterity.  He has most certainly been justified by time.  Compared with his high stand for the right, the opportunism of such a man as Clay shrivels into nothingness.  Within recent years a distinguished American scholar,[1] writing of the principles for which he and his co-workers stood, has said:  “The race question transcends any academic inquiry as to what ought to have been done in 1866.  It affects the North as well as the South; it touches the daily life of all of our citizens, individually, politically, humanly.  It molds the child’s conception of democracy.  It tests the faith of the adult.  It is by no means an American problem only.  What is going on in our states, North and South, is only a local phase of a world-problem....  Now, Whittier’s opinions upon that world-problem are unmistakable.  He believed, quite literally, that all men are brothers; that oppression of one man or one race degrades the whole human family; and that there should be the fullest equality of opportunity.  That a mere difference in color should close the door of civil, industrial, and political hope upon any individual was a hateful thing to the Quaker poet.  The whole body of his verse is a protest against the assertion of race pride, against the emphasis upon racial differences.  To Whittier there was no such thing as a ‘white man’s civilization.’  The only distinction was between civilization and barbarism.  He had faith in education, in equality before the law, in freedom of opportunity, and in the ultimate triumph of brotherhood.