This is what I thought about my neighbors.
Every humane and intelligent inhabitant of Concord, when he or she
heard those bells and those cannons, thought not with pride of the
events of the 19th of April, 1775, but with shame of the events of the
12th of April, 1851. But now we have half buried that old shame
under a new one.
Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring's decision, as if it could in
any way affect her own criminality. Her crime, the most conspicuous
and fatal crime of all, was permitting him to be the umpire in such
a case. It was really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that
she hesitated to set this man free, every moment that she now
hesitates to atone for her crime, she is convicted. The Commissioner
on her case is God; not Edward G. God, but simply God.
I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may
be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act
of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay
the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts
injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the
laughing-stock of the world.
Much has been said about American slavery, but I think that we do
not even yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose
to Congress to make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most
of the members would smile at my proposition, and if any believed me
to be in earnest, they would think that I proposed something much
worse than Congress had ever done.
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