That was their extreme hopefulness--their
untiring confidence. No matter how adverse were the conditions, they
expected to win. They never counted the odds against them. They
trusted in the right which they were firmly persuaded would prevail
some time or another. For that time they were willing to wait,
meanwhile doing what they could to hasten its coming.
Benjamin Lundy, the little Quaker mechanic, who was undeniably the
Peter-the-Hermit of the Abolitionist movement, when setting out alone
and on foot, with his printing material on his back, to begin a
crusade against the strongest and most arrogant institution in the
country, remarked with admirable naivete, "I do not know how soon I
shall succeed in my undertaking."
William Lloyd Garrison, when the pioneer Anti-Slavery Society was
organized by only twelve men, and they people of no worldly
consequence, the meeting for lack of a better place being held in a
colored schoolroom on "Nigger Hill" in Boston, declared that in due
time they would meet to urge their principles in Faneuil Hall--a most
audacious declaration, but he was right.
The writer, when a boy, was witness to an exhibition of the same
spirit.
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