"Exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind."
And there are favoring circumstances peculiar to the present moment. By the passage of the Nebraska Bill, and the Boston kidnapping case, the tyranny of the Slave Power is unmistakably manifest, while at the same time all compromises with Slavery are happily dissolved, so that Freedom stands face to face with its foe. The pulpit, too, released from ill-omened silence, now thunders for Freedom, as in the olden time. [Cheers.] It belongs to Massachusetts, nurse of the men and principles which made the earliest Revolution, to vow herself anew to her ancient faith, as she lifts herself to the great struggle. Her place now, as then, is in the van, at the head of the battle. [Sensation.] To sustain this advanced position with proper inflexibility, three things are needed by our beloved Commonwealth, in all her departments of government,—the same three things which once, in Faneuil Hall, I ventured to say were needed by every representative of the North at Washington. The first is backbone [applause]; the second is BACKBONE [renewed applause]; and the third is BACKBONE. [Long continued cheering, and three cheers for "Backbone."] With these Massachusetts will be felt and respected, as a positive force in the National Government [applause], while at home, on her own soil, free at last in reality as in name [applause], all her people, from Boston islands to Berkshire hills, and from the sands of Barnstable to the northern line, will unite in the cry,—
"No slave-hunt in our borders! no pirate on our strand!
No fetters in the Bay State! no slave upon our land!"
[THE GOOD FARMER AND THE GOOD CITIZEN.]
Letter to the Norfolk Agricultural Society, September 25, 1854.
