“I am not unthoughtful of the ferment or stir that such discourse as this may make among some, who (like Demetrius of old) may say, by this craft we have our wealth, which caused the people to cry out with one voice, great is Diana of the Ephesians, whom all Asia and the world worship.”

He examined and refuted the arguments put forth in defence of slavery, charged slaveholders with idleness, and contended that slavery was the mother of vice, at war with the laws of nature and of God.  Others caught the spirit of reform, and the agitation movement gained recruits and strength every year.  Felt says, “1765.  Pamphlets and newspapers discuss the subjects of slavery with increasing zeal.”  The colonists were aroused.  Men were taking one side or the other of a question of great magnitude.  In 1767 an anonymous tract of twenty octavo pages against slavery made its appearance in Boston.  It was written by Nathaniel Appleton, a co-worker with Otis, and an advanced thinker on the subject of emancipation.  It was in the form of a letter addressed to a friend, and was entitled, “Considerations on Slavery.”  The Rev. Samuel Webster Salisbury published on the 2d of March, 1769, “An Earnest Address to my Country on Slavery.”  He opened his article with an argument showing the inconsistency of a Christian people holding slaves, pictured the evil results of slavery, and then asked,—­

“What then is to be done?  Done! for God’s sake break every yoke and let these oppressed ones go free without delay—­let them taste the sweets of that liberty, which we so highly prize, and are so earnestly supplicating God and man to grant us:  nay, which we claim as the natural right of every man.  Let me beseech my countrymen to put on bowels of compassion for these their brethren (for so I must call them,) yea, let me beseech you for your own sake and for God’s sake, to break every yoke and let the oppressed go free."[379]

Begun among the members of the bar and the pulpit, the common folk at length felt a lively interest in the subject of emancipation.  An occasional burst of homely, vigorous eloquence from the pulpit on the duties of the hour inflamed the conscience of the pew with a noble zeal for a righteous cause.  The afflatus of liberty sat upon the people as cloven tongues.  Every village, town, and city had its orators whose only theme was emancipation.  “The pulpit and the press were not silent, and sermons and essays in behalf of the enslaved Africans were continually making their appearance.”  The public conscience was being rapidly educated, and from the hills of Berkshire to the waters of Massachusetts Bay the fires of liberty were burning.

FOOTNOTES: