Signs of the Times in Massachusetts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
Summary
“Il ne faut pas une bien grande force d'esprit pour comprendre que ni les richesses ni le pouvoir ne rendent heureux. Assez de gens sentent cette vérité. Mais de ceux qui la connoissent pleinement et se conduisent en conséquence, le nombre en est si petit qu'il semble que ce soit là l'effort le plus rare de la raison humaine.”
Paul Louis Courier.Some few years hence it will be difficult to believe what the state of the times was in some parts of the United States, and even in the maritime cities, in 1835. The system of terrorism seems now to be over. It did not answer its purpose, and is dropped: but in 1835 it was new and dreadful. One of the most hideous features of the times was the ignorance and unconcern of a large portion of society about what was being done and suffered by other divisions of its members. I suppose while Luther was toiling and thundering, German ladies and gentlemen were supping and dancing as usual; and while the Lollards were burning, perhaps little was known or cared about it in warehouses and upon farms. So it was in America. The gentry with whom I chiefly associated in New York knew little of the troubles of the abolitionists in that city, and nothing about the state of the anti-slavery question in their own region.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Retrospect of Western Travel , pp. 148 - 165Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010