Various

“ Are not negroes habitually enslaved by each other in Africa? Does not their enslavement here secure an aggregate of labor and production that would else be unattainable? Are we not enabled by it to supply the world with Cotton and Tobacco and ourselves with Rice and Sugar? In short, is not to toil on white men's plantations the negro's true destiny, and Slavery the condition wherein he contributes most sensibly, considerably, surely, to the general sustenance and comfort of mankind? ”

“ For two generations our people have cherished, justified, and pampered slavery, not that they really loved, or conscientiously approved the accursed 'institution,' but because they deemed its tolerance essential to our National Unity; and now we find Slavery desperately intent on and formidably armed for the destruction of that Unity: for two generations we have aided the master to trample on and rob his despised slave; and now we are about to call that slave to defend our National Unity against that master's malignant treason, or submit to see our country shattered and undone. ”

“ It is conscious wrong alone that shrinks from impartial observation and repels unfavorable criticism as hostility. We freely proffer our farms, our factories, our warehouses, common-schools, alms-houses, inns, and whatever else may be deemed peculiar among us, to our visitors' scrutiny and comment: we know they are not perfect, and welcome any hint that may conduce to their improvement. So in the broad, free West. The South alone resents any criticism on her peculiarities, and repels as enmity any attempt to convince her that her forced labor is her vital weakness and her greatest peril. ”

“ Would negroes be employed in the army if they were as Mr. Trollope pictures them? He confesses that without these four millions of slaves the South would be a wilderness, therefore they do work as slaves to the music of the slave-drivers' whip. How very odd, that the moment men and women (for Mr. Trollope does acknowledge them to be such) own themselves, and are paid for the sweat of their brow, they should forget the trades by which they have enriched the South, and become incapable of maintaining themselves—they who have maintained three hundred and fifty thousand insolent slave-owners! ”

“ In seeing nothing but vulgarity in Fifth Avenue, and a thirst for gold all over New-York City, we think Mr. Trollope has given way to prejudice. There is no city so generous in the spending of money as New-York. Art and literature find their best patrons in this much-abused Gotham; and it will not do for one who lives in a glass house to throw stones, for we are not the only nation of shop-keepers. We do not blame Mr. Trollope, however, for giving his love to Boston, and to the men and women of intellect who have homes in and about Boston. ”

“ And the poet's woe is also the woe of common mortals, though his soul is so strung that every breeze that sweeps over it is changed to melody. The wind that wails, and howls, and shrieks around the corners of streets, among the leafless branches of trees, through desolate houses, is the same wind that sweeps the silken strings of the Æolian harp.
Then there is care, most often traced on the face of woman, the care of responsibility or of work, sometimes of both. A man, however hard he may labor, if he loses a day, does not always find an accumulation of work ”

“ There it is—destined, perhaps, to rise to a million—the flower, strength, and intellect of America, our productive force, our brain—yes, the great majority of our mills, and looms, and printing-presses, and all that is capital-producing, are there, in those uniforms. There, friends, lie towns and cities, towers and palace-halls, literature and national life—for there are the brains and arms which make these things. ”

“ We are waiting for grass to grow while the horse is starving! Let the Administration no longer hold back, for lo! the people are ready and willing, and one grasp at a fiercely brave, decided policy would send a roar of approval from ocean to ocean. One tenth part of the wild desire to adopt instant and energetic measures which is now struggling into life among the people, would, if transferred to their leaders, send opposition, North and South, howling to Hades. We find the irrepressible discontent gathering around like a thunder-storm. ”

“ Cyrus Shodd, together with the tall, fragile figure of Miss Tillie Shodd, daughter and heiress apparent and transparent. Rocjean welcomed them as he would have manna in the desert, for he judged by the air and manner of the head of the family, that he was on picture-buying bent. He even gayly smiled when Miss Shodd, pointing out to her father, with her parasol, some beauty in a painting on the easel, run its point along the canvas, causing a green streak from the top of a stone pine to extend from the tree same miles into the distant mountains of the Abruzzi-the paint was not dry! ”

“ They have lied against us, and against millions, that the negro was all we cared for, though it was the WHITE MAN, far, far above the black for whom we spoke and cared, or how else could that free labor in which the black is but a small unit have been our principal hope and thought?
But treason at home could not last forever, nor will lies always endure. The people have found out that the foe can not be gently whipped and amiably reinstated in their old place of honor. ”

“ A power that could produce what Neal produced between 1819 and 1823, properly disciplined and economized, might have performed tasks analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear no weeds.
His novels are always like a rushing torrent, never like a calm stream. ”

“ The South has cast its whole population, all its means, all its energy, heart and soul, life and future, on one desperate game; while we with every advantage have let out our strength little by little, so as to hurt the enemy as little as possible. Doughface democracy among us has squalled as if receiving deadly wounds at every proposal to crush or injure the foe. It opposed, heart and soul, the early On to Richmond movement, when the Republicans clamored for an overwhelming army, a grand rally, and a bold push. ”

“ To feel that so vast a river as the Mississippi, having such affluents as the Missouri and the Ohio, rolled its course entirely through our territory—that the twenty thousand miles of steamboat navigation on that river and its tributaries were wholly our own, without touching on any side our national boundaries—that the Pacific and the Atlantic, the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, were our natural and conceded frontiers, that their bays and harbors were the refuge of our commerce, and their rising cities our marts and depots—were incense to our vanity and stimulants to our love of country. ”

“ A new relation of North to South, based on equality, governed by justice, and conceding the fullest liberty, is to replace fawning servility by manly candor, and to lay the foundations of a sincere, mutual, and lasting esteem. We already know that valor is an American quality; we shall yet realize that Truth is every man's interest, and that whatever repels scrutiny confesses itself unfit to live. ”

“ As it is, had I been like Miss Nancy, I would have been spared many an agony, and—many an exquisite joy.
You may be sure that I have well learned all of caution's maxims; they have, all my life, been dinged into my ears. Now I hate most maxims. Though generally considered epitomes of wisdom, they should, almost all of them, be received with a qualification. What is true in one case is not true in another; what is good for one, is not good for another. You, as far as you are concerned, in exactly the same manner draw two lines, one on a plane, the other on a sphere ”

“ What a melancholy future must confront St. Louis, separated by national barriers from Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and all the vast, undeveloped sources of her present as well as prospective commerce and greatness! Ponder the madness of Baltimore, seeking separation from that active and teeming West to which she has laid an iron track over the Alleghanies at so heavy a cost! But for Slavery, the Southron who should gravely propose disunion, would at once be immured in a receptacle for lunatics. He would find no sympathy elsewhere. ”

“ Ah! friend? it is not the negro per se who distracts and threatens to destroy our country—far from it! Negroes did not wrest Texas from Mexico, nor force her into the Union, nor threaten rebellion because California was admitted as a Free State, nor pass the Nebraska bill, nor stuff the ballot-boxes and burn the habitations of Kansas, nor fire on Fort Sumter, nor do any thing else whereby our country has been convulsed and brought to the brink of ruin. It is not by the negro—it is by injustice to the negro—that our country has been brought to her present deplorable condition. ”

“ If Islamism or Mormonism were the accepted religion of the South, and we were expected to bow to and render at least outward deference to it, there would doubtless be thousands of Northern-born men who, for the sake of office, or trade, or in the hope of marrying Southern plantations, would profess the most unbounded faith in the creed of the planters, and would crowd their favorite temples located on our own soil. But this would not be a real bond of union between us, but merely an exhibition of servility and fawning hypocrisy. ”

“ It is utter nonsense to say that we are two people. Two interests have been at work—free labor and slave labor; and when the former triumphs, there will be no more straws split about two people, nor will the refrain of agriculture versus manufacture be sung. The South, especially Virginia, has untold wealth to be drained from her great water-power. New-England will not be alone in manufacturing, nor Pennsylvania in mining. ”

“ He did not know Rocjean; he never could know a man like him; he never could learn the truth that confidence will overpower strength; only at last, when through his hide and bristles entered the flashing steel, did he, tottering backwards, open his eyes to the fact that he had found his master—that, too, in a poor devil of an artist.
The landscapes were all thrown aside; Shodd must have that portrait. His daughter had set her heart on having it, he said, and could a gentleman refuse a lady any thing? ”

“ You know how in old mummy-cases have been found grains of wheat, which, being sown, sprang up, and bore a harvest like that which waved in the breeze on the banks of the Nile. You know how God's truth—all truth is God's truth—was shut up in that old mummy-case, the monastery, and how, when found by one Luther, and sown broadcast, it sprang up, and now there is hardly an island, or a river's bank, on which it has not fallen and does not bear abundant fruit. The 'heel of despotism' could not crush out its life ”

“ The first draft for the army was a death-blow to the slow-poison democracy, and it has been frightened accordingly. Like a slug on whom salt has just begun to fall, the crawling mass is indeed manifesting symptoms of frightened activity—but it is the activity of death. For the North is awake in real earnest; it is out with banner and bayonet; there is to be no more playing at war or wasting of lives—the foe is to be rooted out—delanda est Dixie. ”