The Society received the natural reward of its faithfulness, in the increase of its strength. Full of cheerful constancy, and reposing undiminished confidence in its General Agent, whose short-comings were known to but few, it pursued its course, rejoicing in freedom, with renewed determination to impart her life-giving influence to the enslaved. At the annual meeting of the National Society, an arrangement was made to obviate that clashing of the fiscal concerns and the interference of agents with each other’s track, which had been so troublesome from the first. By this arrangement, no agents were to labor in Massachusetts but in connection with the wishes of the State Board of officers, and under their direction. With this understanding, ten thousand dollars, were to be raised during the year, in this State, in quarterly payments, for the central treasury at New York. Having thus cast aside every weight and besetting sin, the society girt itself afresh, to run with patient swiftness the race set before it.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Clergymen, he intimated, must not be put forward to do it, as in that case Mr. Garrison would have a handle by which to repel the attempt; but laymen must be sought out and employed for the purpose.
CHAPTER III. THE PLOT.
Our plot is as good a plot as ever was laid; our friends true and constant; a good plot, good friends, and full of expectations: an excellent plot; very good friends. * * * Why my lord of YORK commends the plot, and the general course of the action.
Shakspeare.
The difficulties of writing the history of the past, are greatly enhanced by the scantiness of the materials: our own contemporaneous history on the contrary, seems clogged with their abundance. So many simultaneous events, seemingly of small consequence, yet all having an important bearing on each other, and proving, in reality, the hinges on which the more conspicuous ones turn;—so many threads, which the insufficiency of narration at once to combine, compels the writer to drop for a time, although he must finally travel back to pick them up, or the connections of things will but imperfectly appear;—no wonder if the Mexican method of preserving the memory of events by pictures, should seem preferable to our own. A succession of paintings seems capable of presenting a much clearer view of contemporaneous transactions, than any arrangement of pages. “Narrative is linear—action is solid;” and we must overcome the difficulties of conveying the latter through means of the former, as best we may.
The spirit of Freedom had, by the energy of its advent, struck terror into the world that comprehended it not. The attempts to check its advance by means of mobs, were but as the spur in a victorious charge. The policy of the foes of Freedom became more subtle. It was now their aim, by counterfeiting the voice of truth, by continually substituting a false issue for the real one, and by assuming the guise of zeal for the institutions of religion and government, to operate influentially and as a check upon the abolition mind.—Though their first attempt, developed in the preceding chapter, was, on the whole, a signal failure, owing to the devoted love of abolitionists for their cause and for each other, yet the hatred of the New England opposition seemed to deepen as the increase of light and love exposed its malignity. The position of the ministry, generally, grew more and more uneasy, as the discrepancy between their claims as ambassadors of Christ, and the character of their lives as opposed to the requisitions of his gospel, became apparent.