3.  Every thoughtful and unprejudiced mind must see that such an
    evil as slavery will yield only to the most radical
    treatment.  If you consider the work we have to do, you will
    not think us needlessly aggressive, or that we dig down
    unnecessarily deep in laying the foundations of our
    enterprise.  A money power of two thousand millions of
    dollars, as the prices of slaves now range, held by a small
    body of able and desperate men; that body raised into a
    political aristocracy by special constitutional provisions;
    cotton, the product of slave labor, forming the basis of our
    whole foreign commerce, and the commercial class thus
    subsidized; the press bought up, the pulpit reduced to
    vassalage, the heart of the common people chilled by a bitter
    prejudice against the black race; our leading men bribed, by
    ambition, either to silence or open hostility;—­in such a
    land, on what shall an Abolitionist rely?  On a few cold
    prayers, mere lip-service, and never from the heart?  On a
    church resolution, hidden often in its records, and meant
    only as a decent cover for servility in daily practice?  On
    political parties, with their superficial influence at best,
    and seeking ordinarily only to use existing prejudices to the
    best advantage?  Slavery has deeper root here than any
    aristocratic institution has in Europe; and politics is but
    the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the
    fever-spasm.  Yet we have seen European aristocracy survive
    storms which seemed to reach down to the primal strata of
    European life.  Shall we, then, trust to mere politics, where
    even revolution has failed?  How shall the stream rise above
    its fountain?  Where shall our church organizations or parties
    get strength to attack their great parent and moulder, the
    slave power?  Shall the thing formed say to him that formed
    it, Why hast thou made me thus?  The old jest of one who
    tried to lift himself in his own basket, is but a tame
    picture of the man who imagines that, by working solely
    through existing sects and parties, he can destroy slavery. 
    Mechanics say nothing, but an earthquake strong enough to
    move all Egypt can bring down the pyramids.

Experience has confirmed these views.  The Abolitionists who have acted on them have a “short method” with all unbelievers.  They have but to point to their own success, in contrast with every other man’s failure.  To waken the nation to its real state, and chain it to the consideration of this one duty, is half the work.  So much have we done.  Slavery has been made the question of this generation.  To startle the South to madness, so that every step she takes, in her blindness, is one step more toward ruin, is much.  This we have done.  Witness Texas and the Fugitive Slave Law.

    WENDELL PHILLIPS:  The Abolition Movement, 1853